The Ethics of Belief

Edited by Jonathan Matheson and Rico Vitz

New work from leading figures in the field, and up-and-coming scholars
Combines seminal research in social psychology with philosophy
Will shape the direction of future debate

The Ethics of Belief

Edited by Jonathan Matheson and Rico Vitz

Description

How do people form beliefs, and how should they do so? This book presents seventeen new essays on these questions, drawing together perspectives from philosophy and psychology. The first section explores the ethics of belief from an individualistic framework. It begins by examining the question of doxastic voluntarism-i.e., the extent to which people have control over their beliefs. It then shifts to focusing on the kinds of character that epistemic agents should cultivate, what their epistemic ends ought to be, and the way in which these issues are related to other traditional questions in epistemology. The section concludes by examining questions of epistemic value, of whether knowledge is in some sense primary, and of whether the ethics of belief falls within the domain of epistemology or ethics.
The second section extends this traditional debate to issues concerning the social dimensions of belief formation. It begins with essays by social psychologists discussing the past three decades of research in 'lay epistemics'. It continues by examining Humean, Kantian, and feminist insights into the social aspects of belief formation, as well as questions concerning the ethics of assertion. The section concludes with a series of essays examining a topic that is currently of great interest to epistemologists: namely, the significance of peer disagreement.

The Ethics of Belief

Edited by Jonathan Matheson and Rico Vitz

Introduction, Jonathan Matheson and Rico Vitz
SECTION I: The Ethics of Belief: Individual
1. The Powers that Bind: Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Obligation, Neil Levy and Eric Mandelbaum
2. Deciding to Believe Redux, Andrei Buckareff
3. Varieties of Epistemic Vice, Heather Battaly
4. Knowledge and Time: Kripke's Dogmatism Paradox and the Ethics of Belief, Ernest Sosa
5. Can There Be a Knowledge-First Ethics of Belief?, Dennis Whitcomb
6. Truth as the Fundamental Epistemic Good, Duncan Pritchard
7. Wide-Scope Requirements and the Ethics of Belief, Berit Brogaard
8. The 'Ethics of Belief' is Ethics (Period): Reassigning Responsibilism, Trent Dougherty
SECTION II: The Ethics of Belief: Social
9. The Psychology of Knowledge Formation: Its Impetus, Mechanism, and Social Context, Arie W. Kruglanski and Lauren M. Boyatzi
10. Perspectives on Social Knowledge, Mark Dechesne and Charlotte de Roon
11. Contagion, Community, and Virtue in Hume's Epistemology, Rico Vitz
12. Understanding Epistemic Normativity in Feminist Epistemology, Heidi Grasswick
13. The Commonwealth of Epistemic Ends, Catherine Z. Elgin
14. Assertion and the Ethics of Belief, Sanford Goldberg
15. Evidence of Evidence is Evidence, Richard Feldman
16. Believers as Thermometers, Thomas Kelly
17. Disagreement: Idealized and Everyday, Jonathan Matheson
Index

The Ethics of Belief

Edited by Jonathan Matheson and Rico Vitz

Author Information

Jonathan Matheson, University of North Florida,Rico Vitz, Azusa Pacific University

Jonathan Matheson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Florida. He is the author of 'The Case for Rational Uniqueness' (Logos & Episteme), 'Are Conciliatory Views of Disagreement Self-Defeating?' (Social Epistemology), 'Conciliatory Views of Disagreement and Higher-Order Evidence' (Episteme: A Journal of Social Philosophy), and 'Bergmann's Dilemma: Exit Strategies for Internalists' (Philosophical Studies), co-authored with Jason Rogers.

Rico Vitz is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Azusa Pacific University. He is the author of Reforming the Art of Living: Nature, Virtue, and Religion in Descartes's Philosophy (Springer, forthcoming) as well as various articles and chapters, including 'The Nature and Functions of Sympathy in Hume's Philosophy' (The Oxford Handbook of David Hume), 'Thomas More and the Christian 'Superstition': A Puzzle for Hume's Psychology of Religious Belief' (The Modern Schoolman), 'Descartes and the Question of Direct Doxastic Voluntarism' (Journal of Philosophical Research), 'Doxastic Virtues in Hume's Epistemology' (Hume Studies), and 'Sympathy and Benevolence in Hume's Moral Psychology' (Journal of the History of Philosophy).

Contributors:

Heather Battaly, California State University - Fullerton
Lauren Boyatzi , University of Maryland
Berit Brogaard, University of Missouri - Saint Louis
Andrei Buckareff, Marist College
Mark Dechesne, University of Leiden
Trent Dougherty, Baylor University
Catherine Elgin, Harvard University
Richard Feldman, University of Rochester
Sanford Goldberg, Northwestern University
Heidi Grasswick, Middlebury College
Thomas Kelly, Princeton University
Arie Kruglanski, University of Maryland
Neil Levy, Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, and University of Melbourne
Jonathan Matheson, University of North Florida
Eric Mandelbaum, St Catherine's College, Oxford
Duncan Pritchard, University of Edinburgh
Ernest Sosa, Rutgers University
Rico Vitz, Azusa Pacific University
Dennis Whitcomb, Western Washington University