Irrelevant Influences

Abstract

We often hear such casual accusations: you just believe that because you are a liberal, a Christian, an American, a woman… When such charges are made they are meant to sting—not just emotionally, but epistemically. But should they? It can be disturbing to learn that one's beliefs reflect the influence of such irrelevant factors. The pervasiveness of such influence has led some to worry that we are not justified in many of our beliefs. That same pervasiveness has led others to doubt whether there is any worry here at all. I argue that evidence of irrelevant belief influence is sometimes, but not always, undermining. My proposal picks out ordinary, non‐skeptical cases in which we get evidence of error. It says that, in those cases, evidence of irrelevant influence is epistemically significant. It shows how respecting evidence of error is compatible with the epistemic lives we see ourselves living. We are fallible creatures, yes, but we are also capable and intelligent ones. We can recognize and correct for our own error so as to improve our imperfect, yet nevertheless robust, epistemic lives.

An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence

“… Some calibrationists include Christensen (), Sliwa and Horowitz (), Vavova (forthcoming) and Elga (ms). …”

Irrelevant Cultural Influences on Belief

“…Good Independent Reason Principle (GIRP): To the extent that you have good independent 28 reason to think that you are mistaken with respect to p, you must revise your confidence in p accordinglyinsofar as you can. 29 Vavova's point is that, while the mere recognition that your beliefs have been influenced by irrelevant factors need not lead you to revise your confidenceit need not give you any reason to think the beliefs are mistakenthe recognition that your beliefs are likely to be mistaken because of this should lead you to revise your confidence. This is because, in general, you should revise your beliefs when you have good reason to think they are mistaken.…”

Religious Beliefs and Philosophical Views: A Qualitative Study

“…By contrast, permissivists (e.g., Schoenfield 2014, Vavova 2018 argue that there is some latitude when we form our beliefs and credences. In some cases, we can rationally respond to a given body of evidence in more than one way, coming from a variety of starting points, and perhaps also use different epistemic principles to arrive at our reasoning.…”

“…Horowitz (2014) and Kelly (2014) see moderate permissivism as the view that rational responses can be situated within a certain range. Other forms of moderate permissivism (e.g., Vavova, 2018) focus on the sources of IFs rather than how people respond in the face of IFs and evidence. I will adopt a source-permissivist position in section 5.…”

“…Moreover, they are closely connected to other beliefs. Some authors (e.g., Simpson 2017, Vavova 2018 have attempted to outline general principles that might help us distinguish situations where permissivism is plausible from situations where we should be genuinely worried about the role of IFs in our belief formation. Simpson (2017), for instance, thinks that one can be a permissivist about a given question Q if the agents involved disagree about Q because they have different cognitive abilities and apply different standards.…”