The Responsibility to Know: The

Moral Argument for Epistemic

Responsibility

Matthew Fritz

PHIL 393

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Matthew

Fritz

PHIL 393

The Responsibility to Know: The Moral Argument for Epistemic

Responsibility

Abstract: As epistemic agents, we have certainresponsibilities as "knowers"--there are behaviors andactions which are conducive to knowledge building, andothers which are not. I argue that these epistemicresponsibilities are not completely removed from theethical sphere, and there are cases in which aresponsible moral agent must also be epistemicallyresponsible.

1. Establishing the Problem

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I write this at a time in which nearly unfathomable

information exchange is possible. The existence and

proliferation of modern technology (the internet, smart phones,

social media, etc.) allows individuals in the Western and Eastern

hemispheres to quickly and easily communicate with each other.

Even language barriers can be overcome without looking away from

the screen; rough “cut and paste” translation programs are easily

accessible, while for those willing to invest a little more time

and effort there are many of language-learning programs. Online

databases such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy collect

and compress a mass of scholarly knowledge and render it into a

concise and readable format, while others enable researchers to

utilize documents that are physically unattainable. Anyone today

with a device and internet connection has access to more evidence

—about almost anything, really—than was dreamed possible before

the twentieth century. I like to imagine if we could tell our

predecessors about this Golden Age of Information, and asked them

to predict how it has affected society, they would postulate an

age of cooperation and community. The ease with which

ideological opponents could access each other’s evidence and

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arguments would, if not resolve disputes, at least lend itself to

an increase of sympathy and consideration for a disagreeing

interlocutor.

Yet it seems the opposite effect is occurring. As easy as

it is to seek out differing viewpoints to temper our own, it is

even more palatable to find like-minded individuals with whom to

commiserate over the sorry state of the world, to pet and flatter

their opinions which so closely mimic ours. Or perhaps we mimic

them; after a few reiterations, it becomes a pointless question.

As much as I strive to avoid this pitfall, I find myself

habitually visiting and participating in certain online

environments more than others, if for no other reason that it is

just more bearable to not be constantly arguing the same points

over and over again with people whom, if I am honest, I find

silly.

The epistemic problems with this situation are quickly

apparent. If we continue to remain in the same evidential

environment, implicitly or explicitly rejecting exposure to

markedly different sets of evidence, then we are left

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indefinitely with what is essentially the same set of evidence.

Perhaps an argument becomes more sophisticated here, or a tenet

is slightly modified there, but the overall body of evidence is

substantively the same. One does not need to be a hard

evidentialist to think evidence should play some role in belief

formation, and refusal to admit new evidence which may modify

beliefs is hardly truth-seeking. Indeed, we could go as far as

to say that any truth attained while operating with this static

evidence is merely a lucky guess, unbefitting most definitions of

knowledge.

Allow me to make a clarification. I am not concerned with

evidence that is currently being presented to an epistemic agent

(let us call her Charley) which Charley chooses to ignore. I am

instead discussing evidence that is available in potentia to

Charley; she has not yet accessed it, she has not placed herself

in the environment where such a thing is possible. But she knows

she could if she so wished. But she does not wish, and so does

not admit the evidence to her epistemic system.

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My intuition is that in cases like this, Charley and others

like her have an epistemic duty to engage in motivated,

responsible evidence gathering. That does not seem terribly

controversial to me. If Charley does not fulfill her epistemic

duties then it is her loss; she is missing out on a chance for

responsible truth seeking. A shame, perhaps, but it seems

confined to the realm of epistemology; it is not a necessarily

ethical issue, and the duty remains epistemic, not normative.

My belief is that responsible evidence gathering may be more

than an epistemic duty; it may have normative elements. That is,

moral agents have an ethical duty to engage is responsible

evidence gathering. I think the motivation for making this

argument can be easily outlined. As of this writing, ISIS, an

Islamist organization, is overtaking the Middle East. The

turmoil in recent years certainly aids ISIS in gathering support

and seizing control of areas, but there is another aspect of ISIS

(and violent extremist groups in general) which I find troubling.

It seems that a significant portion of its members are converts

to radicalism; oftentimes these recruits are not themselves from

strictly Muslim countries, but are the Westernized children of

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Muslim immigrant parents. Somehow, these children are exposed to

a radical ideology and embrace it, engaging in a network of like-

minded individuals, all mutually reinforcing each other’s

beliefs. Not, I think, too dissimilar to the situation I

described above. The crucial element, however, is that these

ideologues become so firmly entrenched in their beliefs they

willing to not only passively die for these beliefs, but kill

other people. Specifically the deliberate targeting of civilians

—non-combatants, the uninvolved, the innocent. Such actions are

reprehensible to agents operating outside of that system of

belief, but the people within this system truly, sincerely,

believe in the righteousness of their deeds. They even have

evidence for their actions, since everyone close to them—their

friends and mentors—have provided testimony as to the rightness

of their actions.

My question, generally stated, is if an epistemic duty has a

direct causal relationship with (im)moral acts, does that mean it

is also a normative moral duty? More specifically, does the

epistemic duty of responsible evidence gathering to the end of

proper belief formation also have an ethical aspect? I argue

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that it does, and agents have a moral duty to follow correct

belief-forming processes.

In the next section I will discuss Feldman’s distinction

between moral and epistemic “oughts” and how these different

kinds may relate to each other; specifically, when the

fulfillment of certain moral duties may entail the fulfillment of

epistemic duties. Once this has been established, I will spend

the main part of the paper arguing that as moral agents, we have

responsibility to seek evidence which may have an impact upon our

assessment of a situation and how to respond ethically. After

detailing my thesis, I will seek to answer some apparent

objection.

2. Different “Oughts”

In the case of ethics, we say that a person ought to

perform a certain action, that someone should not do a

certain thing, that people have obligations to act in some

ways, that they have rights and duties, and that they

deserve praise or blame for what they have done. We make

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seemingly analogous epistemic judgements about beliefs

(Feldman, pg. 166).

Feldman calls these “deontological judgements about beliefs (Feldman, pg.

167).” He thinks deontological formulations of justification

“are sometimes true and that good sense can be made of the idea

that we can have epistemic requirements, obligations, and the

like (ibid., pg. 168).” One objection to this deontological

conception is that it is improper to speak of obligation and

requirement in regards to things over which we may have no

control, such as our beliefs or inaccessible evidence. In his

defense of epistemic deontologism, Feldman makes a distinction

between the traditional normative “ought,” of which we say “ought

implies can,” and an epistemic “ought:”

One way to defend deontological epistemic judgements in

the light of doxastic voluntarism is to argue that we

can have epistemic obligations even though we can’t

fulfill them (or even if we can’t help but fulfill

them). This is to deny that “epistemically obligated

to” or “epistemically ought to” implies “can.” And one

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way to make this denial plausible is to show that there

are other kinds of ought statements that don’t imply

voluntary control (Conee and Feldman, pg. 173).

After considering several alternatives, Feldman argues that

epistemic oughts are similar to role oughts: individuals in

certain roles ought to perform up to a certain standard. Whether

the individual is capable of attaining that standard is

irrelevant to the epistemic use of “ought.” One example of a role

ought Feldman provides is “Parents ought to take care of their

kids (ibid., 175).” That is, individuals in the role of parents

ought to perform caring for their children. Now, there are many

situations which may render a parent unable to care for their

child, such as death. It seems strange to blame a dead parent

for their inability to care for their child, particularly if the

parent could not have prevented their demise (ibid). After all,

they really can’t do anything for their kid. Yet we still say

“Parents ought to take care of their kids.”

Feldman makes a key qualification about these role/epistemic

oughts: “These oughts are not based on what’s normal or expected.

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They are based on what’s good performance (ibid., pg. 175).” In

Feldman’s view, role oughts are not meant to guide agents in

their behavior; they are a tool of external assessment.

It seems the crucial difference between role oughts and

normative oughts is role oughts dispense with the implication of

“can,” while normative oughts maintain it. As Feldman puts it:

“These oughts are not based on what is normal or expected. They

are based on what’s good performance (ibid., pg. 175).” Feldman

thinks it is possible to set the issue of voluntary control

(“can”) completely aside while still referring to epistemic

behaviors that should either be engaged in or refrained from by

agents.

I find Feldman’s distinction plausible and appealing. It

dispenses with the problem presented by “ought implies can” while

still allowing us to use a deontological language about epistemic

behaviors. There are many circumstances in which we might say

an individual ought to believe some proposition or other, while

fully recognizing the individual involved is incapable of

altering belief for good or ill. A person with severe psychosis,

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let’s call him Stephen, may be completely incapable of believing

his vivid hallucinations are false, or that he is not the target

of a global conspiracy. It does not seem problematic to me to

say that Stephen, in his role as a believer, ought not to believe

such things on the grounds that well-performing believers should

not believe them (the epistemic ought) while simultaneously

acknowledging that since he cannot believe otherwise, the blame

of having violated a normative ought is not attached to him.

My concern in this section has been demonstrating that what

we refer to as epistemic duties and normative duties are not

necessarily synonymous. My next section will attempt to find

some connection between the two types of duties, or at least

establish that in some situations, fulfilling or failing

epistemic duties may have moral consequences.

3. The Connection Between Moral and Epistemic Duties

I am attempting to argue that moral agents ought, in a

normative sense, to fulfill certain epistemic oughts; responsible

moral agents should also be responsible epistemic agents. The

usage of the term “ought” and the related term “responsible” may

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be taken to have different connotations based on whether they are

used in an epistemic or ethical sense, and even conflict. The

epistemic ought which tells us to seek knowledge is not

necessarily identical with the normative ought which commands us

to perform right action (or refrain from wrong action). Cases in

which the two different oughts conflict are easily conceivable.

Consider an academic who is concerned her arch-rival will soon

publish an article which not only anticipates the academics’

research but also presents unknown and significant arguments

against it. Having access to these arguments would present

significant utility to the academic, not only in professional

capacity but also in her role as a researcher--she “ought” to

have a complete consideration of her topic. The academic has no

reason to think her arch-rival will allow her to preview the

article, due to the decades of bitter competition for funding and

accolades, and her only means of obtaining the draft is through

skulduggery. The ethical “ought,” however, may check this course

of action; a deontological formulation of morality may have a

universal injunction against breaking and entering, bribes, etc.;

a utilitarian perspective may require that the benefit derived

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stealing this draft outweighs suffering, loss of trust, etc.; by

the lights of virtue epistemology, perhaps the researcher lacks

the epistemic virtue of self-reliance, or honesty.

In this scenario and others like it, there is clearly some

interaction occurring between the epistemic and normative oughts,

but perhaps this is just an irrelevant, brute descriptive fact.

I will grant that; I merely raised this example to demonstrate

how the epistemic ought may conflict with the normative. It

seems to me, however, there are other cases in which the two

interact positively and fulfilling an epistemic duty is not just

a laudable, supererogatory normative action, but an actual

requirement for acting morally.

Consider a criminal jury. As epistemic agents, they ought

to know the truth. Reinforcing this is that in their role as a

criminal jury, they ought to establish innocence or guilt, and

decide upon an appropriate punishment. That is what a well-

performing jury does. But didn’t Feldman derive his non-

normative epistemic oughts from non-normative role oughts? It

would be absurd to now attach ethical values to the role ought.

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So I will not do that. Instead I will focus upon the jury’s role

as a dispenser of justice.

Justice, and the conduct of acting justly, are almost always

taken to be moral goods, and moral agents have a responsibility

to be just. At the very least, there is enough of a recognition

of this that arguing otherwise is outside the scope of this

paper. The members of the jury have a responsibility to be just;

since this is based on their status as moral agents and not on

their role as jurors, this responsibility is normative, not a

non-normative duty, epistemic or otherwise. And in this

situation, they have the ability to at least attempt to fulfill

their epistemic duty. Jurors are somewhat limited in what

evidence they are allowed to pursue; they can only respond to the

information presented to them in court. It was the role of the

law enforcement agencies and the lawyers to furnish the jury with

the relevant evidence, and now the jury is responsible for

responding positively and correctly to that evidence.

But suppose that one of the jurors, coming from a small town

in which a one-trick pony would have been hailed as the apogee of

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the fine arts, is over-awed by the grandeur of the courtroom. He

has a tendency to zone out during eyewitness testimony and cross-

examination, only focusing during recess. When the jury retires

to deliberate, our sole inattentive juror is thoroughly confused

as to what his colleagues are referring, and why is everyone so

upset about this glove? While the inattentive juror may not have

the relevant evidence immediately present in his mind, he would

easily be able to gain this access by asking one of his fellows

to catch him up to speed. Indeed, he is so obligated, if he

wants to be a responsible juror and moral agent; a person’s life

hangs in the balance. It is quite plausible the jurors will be

able to determine the truth of the matter (fulfilling their

epistemic duty) which will give them the means to act morally,

that is, properly dispense justice in their role as a jury. If

they neglect their epistemic duty, it will have direct

consequences on their fulfillment of their moral duties.

My argument, in short, is that there are situations in which

success or failure in satisfying epistemic oughts may have direct

consequences on the fulfillment of moral oughts. Responsible

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moral agents, in these scenarios, must be particularly

conscientious of their epistemic responsibilities.

4. The Moral Responsibility to Seek Good Evidence

I have so far been discussing the general relationship

between moral considerations and epistemic responsibilities.

Using this groundwork, I will make the particular argument that

we have a moral responsibility to engage in responsible evidence

gathering.

First on the epistemic obligation to seek out evidence.

Evidentialism, as defined by Conee and Feldman, is “the view that

the epistemic justification of a belief is determined by the

quality of the believer’s evidence for the belief. Disbelief

also can be epistemically justified. The doxastic attitude that

a person is justified in having is the one that fits the person’s

evidence (Feldman and Conee, 83).” While I may personally hold

to the doctrine of Evidentialism, I do not think an Evidentialist

foundation is necessary for my thesis, but I want to mention it

to demonstrate the importance of evidence in any belief-forming

system. It seems to me that an epistemic framework which

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completely discounts evidence is at best weak and flawed, and and

worst recklessly irrational. Conversely, a strong epistemic

framework must somehow incorporate evidence. Evidence,

therefore, has an important epistemic role.

So what about potential evidence, which we have not yet

obtained but could if we exerted the effort? Why should we take

steps to make this potential evidence immediately apparent to our

senses? The answer, I think, is fairly straightforward--because

it will improve our epistemic situation. If one endorses a kind

of epistemic consequentialism, then the steps taken to be a

better knower are epistemically proper.

If a duties-based epistemology is considered, the obligation

to seek out good evidence would seem to go hand-in-hand with the

obligation to factor that evidence into our beliefs. The

obligation to align beliefs with the evidence would seem to

entail that the evidence itself lacks fault, implying that we

have an obligation to ensure our evidence is not faulty, but

proper. I do not see the point of an epistemology which insists

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we match our beliefs to evidence without the attached imperative

to ensure the positive epistemic value of the evidence.

From the standpoint of virtue epistemology, the goal of

epistemology is not a criterion-based approach to what

constitutes knowledge, but rather looks for the good making

qualities of epistemic agents. Possible candidates for epistemic

virtues include honesty, humility, and creativity. I think it is

plausible that curiosity is a viable epistemic virtue; that is, an

epistemic agent who possesses the trait of curiosity is a

superior know than the epistemic agent who lacks the trait of

curiosity. Curiosity, as I am using it, can be understood as

pretty similar to its usual, colloquial sense: seeking after new

information. Surely an active seeker of new evidence, propelled

by an internal desire to know more--curiosity, if you will--is

superior to an epistemic agent with no such drive. But I do not

think curiosity colloquially considered is necessarily an

epistemic virtue; it must be carefully controlled and directed to

be considered as such.

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William James, in his lecture “The Will to Believe” claimed

“We must know the truth; and we must avoid error--these are our first and

great commandments as would-be knowers; but they are not two ways

of stating an identical commandment, they are two separable laws

(James, pg. 173).” Similarly, I think our proper evidence-

seeking obligation can be more precisely described in two

principles: obtain good (true, accurate, reliable) evidence;

avoid bad (false, inaccurate, unreliable) evidence. The reasons

for both are simple enough. To positively build justified

beliefs, evidence supporting certain beliefs is necessary. We

want our beliefs to correspond to the truth, so to that end we

should have true and accurate information. We want to avoid

false, unreliable evidence since it will probably have a negative

impact on our epistemic framework, making it less truthful and

reliable than if it did not have the unreliable evidence. To

resume to argument from virtue epistemology, the epistemic agent

who is able to discriminate between good and bad evidence

appropriately and assign them their proper place in an

epistemological framework has superior epistemic virtue than an

agent who does not.

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I believe I have established we have an epistemic obligation

to engage in responsible evidence gathering for purposes of

belief formation and justification. So what? What’s the moral

impetus for caring about this? After all, earlier in the paper I

argued epistemic responsibilities and moral responsibilities are

not necessarily synonymous.

The connection, I believe, is that our moral situation, with

all the attached dilemmas and decisions, is often if not always

shaped by our epistemic situation. At a very basic level, any

individual’s ethical system is formed by their basic conceptions

of right and wrong, or good and bad. Once a moral framework has

been established, actions that properly align with that morality

in regards to a specific situation are often contingent upon

available information. For instance, Alice believes divorce is

immoral unless adultery is involved. If Alice has no epistemic

justification for believing her husband, Bob, has cheated on her,

then by her own ethical code she is unjustified in filing for

divorce. If she does have such evidence, however, then she also

has the requisite moral justification for seeking a divorce.

This is just one scenario in which our epistemic situation

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affects our moral situation; I do not think there is any shortage

of similar examples. The utilitarian, when presented with

multiple options, ought in a normative sense to choose whatever

will produce the greatest net good.

Morally speaking, should we not strive to achieve maximal

morality, regardless of whether we measure morality by

deontological, consequentialist, or virtue ethicist means? If

our moral choices can be affected by responsible epistemic

behavior, don’t we have a moral obligation to maintain as healthy

an epistemic situation as possible? Finally, if obtaining good

evidence and avoiding bad evidence is an epistemic responsibility

conducive to a good and proper epistemic situation, does it not

follow that such evidence-gathering actions are a moral

responsibility in addition to their epistemic status? The answer

to all these questions, I believe, is “yes.” That is, a moral

agent should in a normative strive to be the best moral agent

they can be. A proper epistemic situation can be necessary to

the moral project, and responsible evidence gathering can be

necessary to the endeavor of having a proper epistemic situation.

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Therefore, in relevant scenarios, moral agents have a normative

responsibility to engage in proper evidence gathering.

5. Objections

Objection I: That some evidence may be inaccessible.

In all the examples I have provided so far, I have tried to

argue that the agent involved was capable of accessing a set of

evidence which, nevertheless, was not immediately apparent to the

subject. That is, there is evidence which the agents does not

have at this exact moment, but is capable of obtaining. My

argument has been that when this potential evidence may influence

the agent’s moral decision making, the agent should, in a

moral/normative sense, try and obtain that evidence. It seems to

me that in many cases this evidence is easy enough to gather.

For instance, in the jury case above, the inattentive juror must

simply pay better attention or ask a couple of questions. It

seems me me that there are many other situations in which the

potential evidence can be accessed, even if doing so is not

necessarily easy.

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There may be situations, however, in which relevant

evidence (that is, evidence which can and should have an

influence on our moral calculus) is completely inaccessible; it

is beyond even the realm of potential evidence. To continue the

jury scenario, suppose a set of incriminating documents once

existed that would have firmly established the correct verdict,

but they have been lost, destroyed, or damaged beyond recovery or

reconstruction. The point is, the jury has no way of accessing

this evidence. No amount of responsible information gathering on

their part can recover what was lost. In this situation, and

others like it where the relevant evidence is inaccessible, what

is the epistemic agent’s moral obligation?

It seems to me that this is when the “ought implies can”

clause for normative action comes into effect. As epistemic

agents, we have certain non-normative epistemic duties--the

performative duties discussed above. As performers of the roles

of good knowers, we ought to have access to all evidence,

regardless of whether or not it is actually attainable. That

ought, however, is non-normative, distinct from the normative,

guiding moral ought. But there is a break between the epistemic

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and moral obligations: for the guiding moral ought, “can” is

implied. As epistemic and moral agents, we have an epistemic

obligation to obtain even unobtainable evidence; but there is no

corresponding moral obligation.

Objection II: There is too much available, potentially relevant evidence.

I began this paper by noting how much information modern

audiences have access to today. A concern that might arise is

that in our attempts to be proper evidence gatherers, we are

either unable to properly sift through the available pool of

evidence to find what is relevant, or that doing so takes up a

ridiculous amount of time (this is actually two objections: we

cannot determine what is the “correct” evidence, and that it is

impractical to do so; I group them together, however, since they

both stem from the issue of a seeming overabundance of evidence).

Regarding the first problem, that the ocean of information

makes getting the relevant evidence difficult, it makes a

difference whether the information is actually categorically

impossible to retrieve or if doing so is merely difficult. If it

is impossible to access, then agents do not have a moral

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responsibility to retrieve it; see “Objection II” above. If it

is possible, however, and the potential evidence pertains to the

agent’s moral responsibilities, then I do not see how the

difficulty of the task impacts the moral imperative. “Ought

implies can” is a very different statement from “Ought implies

easy and convenient.”

The second problem, that searching for evidence can consume

so much of our resources that we neglect other aspects of our

lives, seems to me to have greater weight, but can still be

answered fairly easily. I have not argued that we have a moral

responsibility to have all proper evidence about everything at

all times; I have argued that we have a moral responsibility to

ensure we have the proper evidence about our moral beliefs and

responsibilities and if necessary, should obtain new evidence

relevant to those beliefs. It seems plausible to me that each

moral agent has a particular set of moral responsibilities and

that there is a corresponding set of evidence that the agent

should have to support their moral responsibilities. That is,

moral agents don’t have to be omniscient, having access to each

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and every bit of stray information, just those relevant to their

moral responsibilities.

But what if our evidence-seeking, even about relevant moral

responsibilities, causes us to neglect other moral

responsibilities? My response is that not every moral

responsibility pulls upon us equally, and that when these

responsibilities conflict, a moral agent must ascertain which has

a greater priority (perhaps by gathering evidence about their

situation). For example, Sally thinks she has a moral

responsibility to her dependents, but she also has a moral

responsibility to pay taxes to her government (which is a benign

and responsible government in this example). However, the tax

codes happen to be so byzantine about Sally’s particular

situation that she is unable to comprehend what she is supposed

to be paying (either practitioners of tax law do not exist, or

she is unable to obtain one). Sally spends so much time

researching and trying to figure out what she needs to do to pay

her taxes that she neglects her dependents. If Sally goes back

to caring for her dependents, however, then she runs the risk of

improperly filing her taxes. So she is caught between these two

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moral responsibilities. It seems to me the right thing for Sally

to do is determine which moral responsibility has a greater pull

upon her, then prioritize fulfilling that responsibility at the

expense of the other.

Objection III: The Virtue epistemology challenge.

I have tried to avoid endorsing any particular moral or

epistemological system in this paper, for the purpose of making

my particular claim as palatable as possible to a wide audience.

To that end, I have at least implied that different

epistemological systems can function quite similarly. But what

if there are important functional differences between other

epistemological systems and virtue epistemology? Zagzebski’s

formulation of epistemic virtues is based on traits that increase

understanding for society as a whole, not just one individual.

That is, it has a more “social” concept of knowledge and certain

traits like creativity and originality can be considered

epistemic virtues because while they may result in untrue beliefs

for the individual, they advance understanding for the whole.

What if this “social” concept of knowledge results in a set of

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epistemic obligations which are functionally different from an

epistemology understood as pertaining primarily to the

individual? That is, what if the individual’s obligation to

avoid bad evidence for themselves in the interest of proper

belief formation is overridden by the advancement of society’s

understanding, and as a result their epistemic obligations

conflict with their moral obligations?

If that is the case, I will privilege the moral over the

epistemic. Part of that relates to the earlier discussion of

“oughts;” one ought to, in a normative sense be moral, while the

epistemic “ought” is performative and does not have the attached

normative element. I have argued that there are instances in

which being a proper epistemic agent is conducive to being a

proper moral agent and therefore we should (in a normative sense)

be proper epistemic agents in those scenarios. If being a proper

epistemic agent entails either a failure to fulfill moral

obligations or a direct violation of moral obligations, then the

connection between between the epistemic and the moral is

severed.

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Conclusion

I have argued that although epistemic obligations are not

intrinsically moral in nature, they often have a consequence upon

our morality, which includes both our beliefs and our actions

stemming from those beliefs. In order to have truth-conforming

moral beliefs, we should ensure that the evidence upon which our

beliefs are based is proper and relevant. If necessary, we

should take the next step of obtaining evidence which we are

justified in believing is reliable and has moral repercussions.

If a moral agent acts recklessly or irresponsibly in obtaining

evidence for their beliefs, then they have failed not just

epistemically, but morally as well.

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Appendix: The Epistemic Failings of Extremist Groups

Part of my interest in this project stems from the

activities of members of extremist sects, whether Islamists,

white supremacists, or some other highly ideological, violent

subculture. What concerned me was that many of these individuals

are highly indoctrinated, and their violent, radical actions are

accordance with their framework of beliefs. While their actions

may be causing suffering for innocent people, isn’t it proper to

act in accordance with one’s beliefs, particularly if those

beliefs are supported by the evidence?

By applying the argument I made above--that in situations in

which our evidence affects our moral perceptions, we have a moral

responsibility to collect proper and relevant evidence--I think

we can still find moral fault with these individuals. While some

extremists have been brought up since infancy in whatever brand

of extremism they and their family adhere to, there are others

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who “convert” in adulthood, when their epistemic and moral

faculties should be mature. I find it particularly troubling

when young people raised in a relatively liberal, cosmopolitan

society choose to embrace a system of extreme intolerance and

violence, going so far as to murder their neighbors for the sake

of a far off demagogue. Take the Tsarnaev brothers, for

instance; the two young men planted bombs at the 2013 Boston

Marathon. Three spectators were killed, two young women in their

twenties and an eight year old boy. Nearly three hundred people

were injured. Although the bombers had been raised in the United

States and for most of their lives had been perceived as fairly

regular kids, their beliefs had shifted through the teachings of

Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist cleric.

Whenever the brothers first exposed themselves to al-

Awlaki’s teachings and whatever other Islamist propaganda, they

were receiving evidence for the rightness of the Islamist cause.

My contention, however, is that they were engaging in evidence-

gathering which they should have known would impact their moral

conduct. Knowing this, they should have been especially

conscientious in ensuring this evidence was sound and reliable.

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It was not; al-Awlaki was well-known for his extremism and his

affiliation with violent methods. To summarize, the Tsarnaev

brothers were irresponsible in their evidence gathering and

formed beliefs upon that evidence; they acted in accordance with

those beliefs, and their actions were immoral (I will go so far

as to make the particular moral claim that leaving bombs in

extremely crowded civilian areas with the explicit intent of

causing as much harm to those civilians and spreading as much

fear as possible is a moral wrong). Excusing an individual from

moral blame because they are acting consistently with their

epistemic framework may be tempting, but if the individual is

able to exercise any control over that framework, such an excuse

would be misguided. Evidence gathering is one way in which

epistemic agents can change or reinforce their beliefs; if an

individual collects problematic evidence which may have an effect

on their moral beliefs and conduct, then they have acted

immorally and should be assigned moral blame.

My example of the Tsarnaevs, of course, is meant to be just

one particular case out of many concerning terrorists and other

violent radicals. I also mentioned people who are brought up in

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epistemic environments which support extremist action. They were

raised in an isolated cult, for instance. I do not think these

people are blameless either, though they are in the epistemic

position of passively receiving inappropriate evidence, rather

than actively seeking it out. Perhaps when they were children

and their epistemic and moral faculties were still developing,

they had less of a moral responsibility to ensure they had proper

evidence. Upon reaching adulthood, however, with the moral

responsibilities that usually entails, they failed to verify

whether the evidence they were being given was reasonable to

accept, or if it was merely the rantings of a charismatic

individual. If they act immorally based upon beliefs which they

had the opportunity to evidentially verify or refute, they should

still be held morally accountable for their actions.

There may be instances in which individuals are

epistemically and morally justified in acting against the norms

of their society, but there are many more situations in which

those individuals are unjustified. If they have willingly

allowed themselves to get into that situation, they are morally

responsible for their actions.

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Bibliography

Feldman, Richard and Earl Conee. “Evidentialism” in Evidentialism:

Essays in Epistemology. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 2004

Filice, Carlo. “On the Obligation to Keep Informed About Distant

Atrocities.” Human Rights Quarterly 12, no. 3 (Aug., 1990.): 397-414.

James, William. The Will to Believe. Philosophical Clubs of Yale and

Brown Universities, 1896.

Zagzebski, Linda. “Virtues of the Mind, Selections” in Epistemology: An

Anthology, edited by Sosa, Kim, Fantl, and McGrath. Blackwell

Publishing, 2008.