Berislav Marušić (Brandeis University)
Thursday, Oct. 26, 2017
“How Can Beliefs Wrong? — A Strawsonian Epistemology”
Berislav Marušić and Aarthy Vaidyanathan
Abstract:
Sometimes believing something, or failing to believe something, can be a way of wronging someone. For example, sometimes you can be wronged if another person doesn’t believe you when you tell them something. Or, sometimes you can be wronged if another person believes that you are saying something just because you have a particular gender, race, class, sexual orientation, or some other feature that they take to be a defining feature of your speech. However, it is puzzling how beliefs could wrong: if they are based on adequate evidence, then these beliefs seem to be rational, and if they are based on inadequate evidence, then they seem to be irrational or ungrounded or simply stupid. But how could they wrong you? The aim of this paper is to explain how this is possible. We argue that in belief as in action, it is possible to take what Peter Strawson has called the objective stance towards others, and doing so has the potential of wronging them—of seeing them as mere objects that, like thunderstorms, are part of a world of evolving events, rather than as persons who say and think things for reasons.