Epistemic Warrant for Ethical Beliefs in Relation to Living Freely and Patriarchal Systems of Oppression

Regarding the epistemic warrant for ethical beliefs, I will make three arguments. First, that warrant for an ethical belief can only be transferred interpersonally if the adopter fully understands the justifications for that belief or takes the reasoning of the testifier as a proxy for their own. Second, that if most or all of one’s ethical beliefs are based on other’s testimony, that person will be living freely only if those beliefs were adopted with proper warrant. Third, that systems of oppression are unethical in part because the oppressed are expected to take on ethical beliefs from authority figures without valid warrant, rendering the oppressed unfree. I will specifically use patriarchal systems of oppression to illustrate this final point. 1. The Limited Transferability of Epistemic Warrant for Ethical Beliefs Ethical beliefs are epistemically warranted by the reasons that justify them. The Kantian belief that lying is wrong is justified by the principle that one shouldn’t abuse another’s rational capacity (whether or not that belief and principle are true). If one has a belief with no justification, then that belief has no epistemic warrant. In fact, I am taking ‘epistemic warrant’ as simply referring to a sufficient reason or justification to hold a particular belief. Not all types of justification are sufficient to warrant an ethical belief. To illustrate, consider this example: You are undecided on the ethical permissibility of abortion. When speaking to your friend, you take on the belief that abortion is always wrong, solely because your friend said it was true. In this case, your belief is based on a reason, but it is not justified by a sufficient reason. This raises the question, what constitutes a sufficient reason or justification for an ethical belief? I will give an account that will explain why the example above is not an instance of sufficient justification. 1 Whenever ‘warrant’ is referred to, it should be understood specifically as epistemic warrant. Res Cogitans (2016) 7 Raj | 102 2155-4838 | commons.pacificu.edu/rescogitans There are two types of sufficient reason that may warrant an ethical belief. The first is understanding the principles that account for that belief being true. The Kantian is justified in believing that lying is always wrong, because they believe that abusing a rational capacity is always wrong, and they understand how that principle accounts for the wrongness of lying. In addition, for a belief to be justified, the principle that explains it must also be justified. Otherwise, we would be taking beliefs based on totally unfounded principles, and thus the beliefs would not be justified at all. As such, a justified ethical belief requires a chain of justification between increasingly fundamental principles that account for the truth of one another. Whether these principles must ‘bottom out’ in a most fundamental, self-evident principle (the sort that is self-justifying) or whether these principles may justify one another in a circular, Coherentist fashion, I will leave standing in this paper. Now, if understanding as I have described it was the only way for us to have warranted ethical beliefs, then warrant could only be transferred in a very limited fashion. Only by receiving a complete account of the principles that justify a belief could one take on that belief with warrant. This type of transfer is reminiscent of a Socratic discussion format, whereby Socrates would lead one through a complete line of reasoning to arrive at the belief being argued for. Allan Gibbard refers to this type of transfer of ethical belief as Socratic Influence (174). One may even think of this type of discussion as not strictly constituting a transfer of warrant, but rather generating a new warrant for the one taking on the belief. This is due to the fact that the warrant is derived from one’s personal understanding of the justificatory relations between the principles that account for the belief. As such, it is more accurate to say that this type of Socratic influence leads one to generate their own warranted belief, rather than enabling the transfer of a pre-existing warrant. However, as alluded to earlier, there is a second means of transferring warranted ethical beliefs. It involves one treating another’s reasoning as a proxy for one’s own. Gibbard refers to this idea as Contextual Authority (174). The idea I will sketch is similar to Gibbard’s, but does not involve the background of Non-cognitivism that Gibbard accepts. With the moral realist assumption that I am using, Contextual Authority refers to one taking on another’s belief by treating the testifier as a proxy or delegate of one’s own reasoning. In Gibbard’s sense, this assignment of authority is justified because it is based on the context of shared social norms. In my usage, this delegation of reasoning is justified by the assumption of shared rational capacities and logical foundations. As such, I argue that Contextual Authority can be assigned to another even if there are few shared social norms, so long as there is reason to believe that there exists a context of shared basic logic and disposition for rational thought. Therefore, one may derive a 2 I make a single specific exception for children and certain adults in Section 1a. 3 Here I make the assumption that rationality itself should be considered a fundamental cognitive capacity, rather than merely a social norm. Res Cogitans (2016) 7 Raj | 103 2155-4838 | commons.pacificu.edu/rescogitans warranted ethical belief from another where there exists an assumed or demonstrated shared foundation of common rationality. To make this point clear, I would like to sketch several illustrative examples. Imagine that a detective is investigating a murder case and has a suspect. You and the detective share similar rational capabilities, and you both believe that murderers should be jailed if there is sufficient evidence of guilt. However, the detective is privy to more information about the case than you are. You are aware of this disparity in relevant information. The detective tells you that the suspect is guilty based on the evidence and so should be jailed. Based on the assumption of shared reasoning, you assign Contextual Authority to the detective, and take on her belief. This means that you believe that if you were in the detective’s position, you would personally reason to the same conclusions that the detective did. In doing so, you take on her belief that the suspect is guilty and so should be jailed, with an epistemic warrant for that belief. However, there are comparable circumstances in which you couldn’t assign Contextual Authority, if you have reason to believe that there is not sufficiently shared rational capacity. Suppose that an acquaintance attests to you that the suspect is guilty based on what logically follows from the evidence. However, you know that your acquaintance has a chronic cognitive impairment, which has severely limited her ability to reason clearly and construct valid logical arguments. As such, you could not assign Contextual Authority to the acquaintance and take on her belief with warrant, because you know that she does not have the same reasoning capacity as you. Therefore, you could not treat her reasoning as a proxy for your own. In other words, you do not have sufficient reason to think that, if you knew what she did, you would reach the same conclusions based on your own reasoning. Similar examples will arise where a testifier’s rationality is temporarily impaired by certain drugs or brain damage, based on the same principles. Contextual Authority may only be applied where one has reason to believe that there is shared rationality between the participants of the conversation. That judgment is a limiting requirement that reduces the circumstances in which Contextual Authority may be applied. This requirement is also what justifies one’s using Contextual Authority: one must use their own reason to judge whether there is sufficiently shared rationality. While one may use Contextual Authority based on an assumption of shared rationality, it must be a reasonable assumption. In this way, beliefs from Contextual Authority are still justified by one’s personal reason, even though they are allowing for a particular type of delegation of that reasoning. 1a. On Children and Mentally Impeded Adults One point to address is that most children wouldn’t have many if any warranted ethical beliefs, according to what I have said thus far. Young children rarely if ever develop Res Cogitans (2016) 7 Raj | 104 2155-4838 | commons.pacificu.edu/rescogitans complete justificatory chains of reasoning for an ethical belief, nor do they generally seem to treat the reasoning of others as a proxy for their own (see Gelman). This appears especially true for children and their parents. For example, when a parent tells their child that it is wrong to steal, and the child takes on that belief, they are most likely not reasoning that they would arrive at the same conclusion if only they had all the information their parent has. In other words, it seems that children are not often if ever assigning Contextual Authority to their parents. Rather, they seem to be assigning a different kind of authority, based on the hierarchical and protective relation between parent and child. At first glance, this may seem to be a problem for my previous theorizing, due to the fact that it simply seems strange that children have no epistemic warrant to believe what their parents say they should do. I address this issue by allowing for another type of authority assignment, limited in its application to young children and certain adults. I will designate this type as ‘Benevolent Authority’. One assigns this type of authority to their caretaker, when they have reason to believe that the caretaker genuinely has the person’s best interests in mind. For most unabused children, I will assume that