Epistemic Responsibility for Undesirable Beliefs

Deborah K. Heikes is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

This book considers whether we can be epistemically responsible for undesirable beliefs, such as racist and sexist ones. The problem with holding people responsible for their undesirable beliefs is: first, what constitutes an "undesirable belief" will differ among various epistemic communities; second, it is not clear what responsibility we have for beliefs simpliciter; and third, inherent in discussions of socially constructed ignorance (like white ignorance) is the idea that society is structured in such a way that white people are made deliberately unaware of their ignorance, which suggests their racial beliefs are not epistemically blameworthy.   
This book explores each of these topics with the aim of establishing the nature of undesirable beliefs and our responsibility for these beliefs with the understanding that there may well be (rare) occasions when undesirable beliefs are not epistemically culpable.

Considers how racist and sexist beliefs can be held to be genuinely undesirable in a world of post-truth and alt-facts

1 Epistemic Responsibility: An Overview

1.1 The Trouble with "Facts"

1.2 How Epistemology Undermines Responsibility

1.3 Exculpatory Ignorance

1.4 The Problem of Culpability

1.5 Three Questions                        

2 What is Undesirable Belief?

2.1 Truth and Undesirability

2.2 Whose Undesirability?

2.3 The Intersectionality of Oppression

2.4 Finding Fact in the Midst of Conflicting Value

2.5 Transformational Criticism and Undesirability

2.6 The Challenge of Intellectual Authority

2.7 Undesirable Belief and Exculpatory Reasons

2.8 Taking Social Acceptability Seriously

      

3 Can There Be Epistemic Responsibility?         

3.1 Epistemic Voluntarism? Belief as Habits of Action

3.2 The Intractability of Undesirability

3.3 Salvaging Epistemic Responsibility

3.4 Doxastic Intentions and Epistemic Responsibility

3.5 Doxastic Influence and Responsibility

3.6 Epistemic Humility/Epistemic Hubris

3.7 Epistemic Communities and the Possibility of Voluntarism

3.8 Joint Epistemic Responsibility 

4 What About the Exculpatory Effects of Ignorance?      

4.1 Varieties of Ignorance and Exculpation

4.2 Immersion and Responsibility within Socially Constructed Ignorance

4.3 Deliberate Ignorance and Responsibility

4.4 Anti-Individualism and Epistemic Heroism

4.5 Holding Out for Epistemic Heroes

4.6 When Should We Know? 

4.7 Whose Ignorance?  Whose Responsibility?                     

5 It's Not My Fault

5.1 Epistemic Individualism Be Damned

5.2 Epistemic Dependence and Individual Responsibility 

5.3 Epistemic Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Becoming a Cognitive Newborn 

5.4 It May Really Not Be My Fault