Epistemic Obligations: Truth, Individualism, and the Limits of Belief

4 Epistemic Obligations and Justification

85 4 Epistemic Obligations and Justification In chapter 2 we developed a view of epistemic obligations according to which we need to minimize, if not eliminate, our false beliefs and maximize contextually significant true beliefs. We also suggested a broader concept of epistemic excellence that includes believing a wide variety of truths that enable us to function well in life and enhance our overall well-being. We patterned this after how we understand moral excellence, which includes the categories of prohibited, obligatory, permitted, and especially meritorious actions. But the obligation to hold true beliefs and avoid false beliefs faces two serious difficulties. First, how can we fulfill our epistemic obligations when our access to the truth is limited, perspectival, fallible, uncertain, and, especially with respect to general and theoretical propositions, often disputed? If we are to maximize contextually relevant significant truths, we must be able to know what is true. If we are to shun error, we must know what is true to be able to distinguish it from what is false. Although our appeal to epistemic obligations sets a high objective standard, the subjective problem of determining what to believe remains. How do we determine what is true and what is false? We 86 Epistemic Obligations can appeal to perceptual experiences, testimony, memory, rational arguments containing inductive and deductive inferences , but these are all disputable sources. It is not that they are unimportant; surely they play a critical role in our arriving at true beliefs. But they often are fallible sources for determining what to believe. The difficulty is that from having epistemic obligations it does not follow that I have to believe what you believe or that you believe what I believe, for we might disagree about what is true. Our obligation to believe the truth does not guarantee uniformity of beliefs. But how do we go about resolving disputes about what to believe? And if we cannot resolve these disputes, what is the value of appealing to epistemic obligations? If we cannot agree about what is true, we might as well allow people the right to believe what they want. The claim that there is difficulty and disagreement in discerning the truth is not the same objection as proposed by those who assert that there is no truth. This latter objection fails from the outset, for one might inquire of its advocates whether their claim that there is no truth is true or false. If true, it contradicts the original thesis. If not true, we need not worry about the claim. If neither true nor false, what then is the epistemic status of the advanced claim, and why should we take it seriously? Thus, the issue here is not whether there are any truths, but rather the potential disputability of truth claims. The second difficulty is that simply having true beliefs seems inadequate for meeting our epistemic obligations, for we might hold true beliefs by accident or even for bad reasons. What we desire, it is argued, is not mere true belief, but belief arrived at by rational methods or that is rationally grounded. We want beliefs that, as Socrates put it in Meno (98a), are tethered. But our discussion of epistemic obligations focused on belief, not on the rational grounds for the belief. The common response to both of these problems is that epistemic obligations are less concerned with our obligations to believe contextually significant truths and avoid falsehood than with seeing that the beliefs we hold are justified. Epistemic Obligations and Justification 87 Epistemic obligations are not merely about holding true beliefs; they are about holding true beliefs for the right reasons . With respect to the first problem, one way to approach our epistemic obligations to believe contextually significant truths is to discern what is true through justification; justification assists us to determine what is true and what is false by providing evidence or reasons for belief. When we disagree about the truth of a belief, we mutually inquire about the evidence that might be given to support that belief. Regarding the second, to avoid true beliefs formed or held accidentally, we should refrain from believing where we have inadequate grounds and accept only those beliefs that are or can be supported by adequate grounds or evidence.1 We are epistemically obligated to hold justified beliefs. This is the position of the most strident believer in epistemic obligations, William Clifford, though articulated on...