One of the ideas that Quassim Cassam examines in his book Vices of the Mind is the idea of responsibility. Cassam recognizes two forms of responsibility in his book and examines those forms of responsibility through the lens of epistemic vices. The first form of responsibility is acquisition responsibility, or our responsibility for acquiring beliefs or developing ways of thinking, and the second form of responsibility is revision responsibility, or our responsibility for changing beliefs and ways of thinking that are shown to be harmful.
Within this context Cassam provides interesting insight about our beliefs. He writes, “If I raise my arm voluntarily, without being forced to raise it, then I am in this sense responsible for raising it.
Notoriously, we lack voluntary control over our own beliefs. Belief is not voluntary.”
Cassam explains that if it is raining outside, we cannot help but believe that it is raining. We don’t have control over many of our beliefs, they are in some ways inescapable and determined by factors beyond our control. beliefs are almost forced on us by external factors. I think this is true for many of our beliefs, ranging from spiritual beliefs to objective beliefs about the world. As Cassam argues, we are not acquisition responsible for believing that we are individuals, that something is a certain color, or that our favorite sports team is going to have another dreadful season.
But we are revision responsible for our beliefs.
Cassam continues, “We do, however, have a different type of control over our own beliefs, namely, evaluative control, and this is sufficient for us to count as revision responsible for our beliefs.”
Cassam introduces ideas from Pamela Hieronymi to explain our evaluative control over our beliefs. Hieronymi argues that we can revise our beliefs when new information arises that challenges those beliefs. She uses the example of our beliefs for how long a commute will be and our shifting beliefs if we hear about heavy traffic. We might not be responsible for the initial beliefs that we develop, but we are responsible for changing those beliefs if they turn out to be incorrect. We can evaluate our beliefs, reflect on their accuracy, and make adjustments based on those evaluations.
It is important for us to make this distinction because it helps us to better think about how we assign blame for inaccurate beliefs. We cannot blame people for developing inaccurate beliefs, but we can blame them for failing to change those beliefs. We should not spend time criticizing people for developing racist beliefs, harmful spiritual beliefs, or wildly inaccurate beliefs about health, well-being, and social structures. What we should do is blame people for failing to recognize their beliefs are wrong, and we should help people build evaluative capacities to better reflect on their own beliefs. This changes our stance from labeling people as racists, bigots, or jerks and instead puts the responsibility on us to foster a society of accurate self-reflection that push back against inaccurate beliefs. Labeling people will blame them for acquiring vices, which is unreasonable, but fostering a culture that values accurate information will ease the transition to more accurate beliefs.
Novel Learning 