Table Of ContentThe Ethics of Belief and Beyond
“Specialists in the ethics of action and the nature of practical reason now
routinely interact with specialists in epistemology and the normativity of
belief to address broader issues in the normativity of all kinds of mental
states. As both felds learn from another, new questions and new avenues for
inquiry come into view. This is a welcome collection of new essays by frst-
rate philosophers in the emerging feld of mental normativity.”
—Peter J. Graham, University of California, Riverside, USA
This volume provides a framework for approaching and understanding
mental normativity. It presents cutting-edge research on the ethics of belief as
well as innovative research beyond the normativity of belief – and towards
an ethics of mind. By moving beyond traditional issues of epistemology the
contributors discuss the most current ideas revolving around rationality,
responsibility, and normativity.
The book’s chapters are divided into two main parts. Part I discusses
contemporary issues surrounding the normativity of belief. The chapters here
cover topics such as control over belief and its implication for the ethics of belief,
the role of the epistemic community for the possibility of epistemic normativity,
responsibility for believing, doxastic partiality in friendship, the structure and
content of epistemic norms, and the norms for suspension of judgment. In Part
II the focus shifts from the practical dimensions of belief to the normativity and
rationality of other mental states – especially blame, passing thoughts, fantasies,
decisions, and emotions. These chapters illustrate how we might approach
an ethics of mind by focusing not only on belief, but also on debates about
responsibility, rationality, and the normativity of involuntary mental states.
The Ethics of Belief and Beyond paves the way towards an ethics of mind
by building on and contributing to recent philosophical discussions in the
ethics of belief and the normativity of other mental phenomena. It will be
of interest to upper-level students and researchers working in epistemology,
ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology.
Sebastian Schmidt is a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at the University of
Zurich. His research in epistemology and metaethics focusses on responsibility
and reasons for attitudes.
Gerhard Ernst holds a chair for philosophy at the Friedrich-Alexander-
Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). Since 2018 he is President of
the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie (German Society for Philosophy).
His main research areas are epistemology and metaethics. His works include
Das Problem des Wissens (The Problem of Knowledge) (2002) and Die
Objektivität der Moral (The Objectivity of Morality) (2008).
Routledge Studies in Epistemology
Edited by Kevin McCain
University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
and
Scott Stapleford
St. Thomas University, Canada
Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology
Edited by Brian Kim and Matthew McGrath
New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism
Edited by Casey Doyle, Joseph Milburn, and Duncan Pritchard
Knowing and Checking
An Epistemological Investigation
Guido Melchior
Well-Founded Belief
New Essays on the Epistemic Basing Relation
Edited by J. Adam Carter and Patrick Bondy
Higher-Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology
Edited by Michael Klenk
Social Epistemology and Relativsm
Edited by Natalie Alana Ashton, Martin Kusch, Robin McKenna
and Katharina Anna Sodoma
Epistemic Duties
New Arguments, New Angles
Edited by Kevin McCain and Scott Stapleford
The Ethics of Belief and Beyond
Understanding Mental Normativity
Edited by Sebastian Schmidt and Gerhard Ernst
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Epistemology/book-series/RSIE
The Ethics of Belief
and Beyond
Understanding Mental
Normativity
Edited by Sebastian Schmidt
and Gerhard Ernst
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Sebastian Schmidt and Gerhard
Ernst; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Sebastian Schmidt and Gerhard Ernst to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
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now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-24550-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-28497-7 (ebk)
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction: Towards an Ethics of Mind 1
SEBASTIAN SCHMIDT
PART I
New Perspectives on Belief Normativity 21
A Doxastic Agency and Responsibility 22
2 Implications of the Debate on Doxastic
Voluntarism for W. K. Clifford’s Ethics of Belief 23
MARTINA LINDNER
3 Believing as We Ought and the Democratic Route
to Knowledge 47
MATTHEW CHRISMAN
4 Responsibility for Doxastic Strength Grounds
Responsibility for Belief 71
BENOIT GAULTIER
B Reasons for Belief 86
5 Relationships and Reasons for Belief 87
LINDSAY CRAWFORD
6 Instrumental Reasons for Belief: Elliptical Talk
and Elusive Properties 109
ASBJØRN STEGLICH-PETERSEN AND MATTIAS SKIPPER
vi Contents
7 Suspension of Judgment, Rationality’s
Competition, and the Reach of the Epistemic 126
ERROL LORD
PART II
Facets of an Ethics of Mind 147
A Responsibility, Reasons, and Rationality 148
8 Responsibility for Attitudes, Object-Given
Reasons, and Blame 149
SEBASTIAN SCHMIDT
9 Two Kinds of Rationality 176
GERHARD ERNST
B The Ethics of Blame, Fear, Decision,
Passing Thought, and Phantasy 191
10 The Ethics of Blame: A Primer 192
D. JUSTIN COATES
11 How Safe Should We Feel? On the Ethics
of Fear in the Public Sphere 215
SABINE A. DÖRING
12 Determining the Future 234
MATTHEW SOTERIOU
13 Silence and Salience: On Being Judgmental 256
NEAL A. TOGNAZZINI
14 The Value of a Free and Wandering Mind 270
MIRIAM SCHLEIFER McCORMICK
List of Contributors 289
Index 292
Acknowledgements
This volume owes its existence, frst and foremost, to its contributors. We
discussed our ideas with each other for the frst time at the conference
Ethics of Mind: Responsibility, Normativity, and Rationality that took
place at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Ger-
many) in June/July 2017. This was now almost three years ago. We thank
our contributors warmly for their reliability and patience throughout the
publication process.
We are grateful to Lisa Marani for co-organizing this workshop with
us. We would also like to thank Benjamin Kiesewetter, Conor McHugh,
Anne Meylan, and David Owens for contributing to the workshop by
commenting on frst drafts of our papers and by presenting their most
recent research in this area. We are grateful also to all the other par-
ticipants at the workshop, especially our students in our (Lisa Marani’s
and Sebastian Schmidt’s) graduate class on the ethics of mind in summer
2017, for their helpful comments and their interest. Special thanks to
Andreas Lugauer for going over the fnal manuscript with us. Thanks
also to Christian Seidel for his very helpful advice. For their generous
fnancial support, we would like to thank the Thyssen-Stiftung.
We would also like to thank Kevin McCain and Scott Stapleford
for considering and accepting our volume for the Routledge Studies
in Epistemology series. We also thank Allie Simmons, Ramachandran
Vijayaragavan, Kerry Boettcher, Brian Frastaci, as well as the entire staff
from Routledge who were involved in the publication of this volume for
so patiently leading us throughout the editing process.
1 Introduction
Towards an Ethics of Mind
Sebastian Schmidt
1. The Problem of Mental Normativity
Our attitudes – our beliefs, desires, emotions, and intentions – are not
actions. They are conceived of as mental states we are in, rather than as
things we actively perform. Intuitively, we are not responsible merely for
being in a state – at most, we are responsible for causing a state or for
failing to avoid it. And yet we respond to and evaluate our attitudes in
ways which are similar to the ways in which we respond to and evaluate
our actions. We think that we ought to believe in human-induced climate
change, and we even consider it to be appropriate to criticize others if
they fail to believe in it. A malicious desire, like the desire for another’s
suffering, can rightly provoke not only disapproval, but also resentment
or indignation. An emotion like anger might turn out to be unjustifed,
and we might owe an apology to the person who was the target of our
hostile emotion. And merely intending to become a better person is often
already worthy of praise or credit.1
Indeed, it is a widely shared assumption also in contemporary episte-
mology and metaethics that not only our actions but also our attitudes
are governed by norms, and that we are, in some sense, responsible for
whether we comply with these norms. In epistemology, there is a long tra-
dition that aims at providing a justifcation for our beliefs about an exter-
nal world. Skeptical challenges – as posed by the thought experiments
of the Cartesian Demon (Descartes 1641) or the Brain in a Vat (Putnam
1981) – call into doubt that we have reasons for our everyday beliefs
(like your belief that you are reading this text right now). Replying to
such skeptical challenges – justifying our everyday beliefs – is sometimes
viewed as the central motivation for engaging in epistemology.2 It is thus
not farfetched at all to conceive of epistemology as a normative discipline
analogous, somehow, to ethics. How far we can take this analogy is, of
course, a question open to reasonable dispute. Especially Clifford (1877)
and James (1896) took the analogy so far as to speak of an ethics of
belief: they discussed how moral and prudential considerations bear on
the norms of belief, thereby motivating contemporary discussions about
what kinds of reasons determine what we ought to believe.3
