Permission to Believe: Why Permissivism Is True and What It Tells Us About Irrelevant Influences on Belief

Abstract

In this paper, I begin by defending permissivism: the claim that, sometimes, there is more than one way to rationally respond to a given body of evidence. Then I argue that, if we accept permissivism, certain worries that arise as a result of learning that our beliefs were caused by the communities we grew up in, the schools we went to, or other irrelevant influences dissipate. The basic strategy is as follows: First, I try to pinpoint what makes irrelevant influences worrying and I come up with two candidate principles. I then argue that one principle should be rejected because it is inconsistent with permissivism. The principle we should accept implies that it is sometimes rational to maintain our beliefs, even upon learning that they were caused by irrelevant influences.

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.…”

“…Indeed, as Schoenfield (2014) argues, there are many situations where finding out that one has been subject to IFs when forming the belief that p is a proper cause to lower one's confidence in the credence that p. For example, suppose a voter was targeted by a tailored political campaign (based on her FaceBook likes, posts, and private messages suggesting she is anxious and xenophobic) with fake news suggesting that Muslim immigrants are swamping the country. After days of seeing such misleading news articles and ads, the voter comes to the belief that this is indeed the case.…”

“…Unfortunately, there is no generally-agreed principled account of which IFs are innocuous and which are pernicious. Schoenfield (2014) recommends to look at the extent to which the beliefs formed through IFs are in tension with one's other beliefs. According to her, beliefs formed early in life (for instance, through upbringing) are less likely to be in tension with one's other beliefs, and thus we are permitted to maintain such beliefs.…”

“…To dismiss such disagreements as unreasonable, or to deem the scientists' conclusions irrational because of background factors beyond their control, seems implausible. Formally, many theories of rationality (e.g., coherentism, subjective Bayesianism) require that permissivism is true (Schoenfield 2014).…”

Ur-Priors, Conditionalization, and Ur-Prior Conditionalization

“…As before, I'll understanding of ur-priors, independent of Ur-Prior Conditionalization, see Schoenfield (2014) and Titelbaum (2016).…”