Relevance and risk: How the relevant alternatives framework models the epistemology of risk

Abstract

The epistemology of risk examines how risks bear on epistemic properties. A common framework for examining the epistemology of risk holds that strength of evidential support is best modelled as numerical probability given the available evidence. In this essay I develop and motivate a rival 'relevant alternatives' framework for theorising about the epistemology of risk. I describe three loci for thinking about the epistemology of risk. The first locus concerns consequences of relying on a belief for action, where those consequences are significant if the belief is false. The second locus concerns whether beliefs themselves-regardless of action-can be risky, costly, or harmful. The third locus concerns epistemic risks we confront as social epistemic agents. I aim to motivate the relevant alternatives framework as a fruitful approach to the epistemology of risk. I first articulate a 'relevant alternatives' model of the relationship between stakes, evidence, and action. I then employ the relevant alternatives framework to undermine the motivation for moral encroachment. Finally, I argue the relevant alternatives framework illuminates epistemic phenomena such as gaslighting, conspiracy theories, and crying wolf, and I draw on the framework to diagnose the undue skepticism endemic to rape accusations.

Varieties of Moral Encroachment

“…Schroeder (2018) offers a case where a hiring manager believes, based on demographic distributions in his field, that a married job candidate will, if hired, take advantage of maternity benefits shortly after. As Gardiner (2019) points out, these cases introduce a new stakeholder, absent from cases used to motivate pragmatic encroachment. In addition to being sensitive to the ways that errors might be costly for the believing agent and the subject of the belief, these draw our attention to the possible costs to the other members of the social group invoked by the inference.…”

“…Pritchard (2016) holds that the error possibilities, while improbable, remain too salient or ‘nearby’ to eliminate, and so belief would not be safe. Gardiner (2019) notes these parallels, and outlines (without endorsing) how a Relevant Alternatives framework can be leveraged to support moral encroachment.…”

“…The effects of extra‐evidential considerations is to expand the scope of relevant alternatives, or extend the range of relevantly close worlds, so that the evidence must dismiss more error possibilities than would be relevant if the moral stakes were lower. (Bolinger, 2018; Buchak, 2014; Moss, 2018a) offer mechanisms of this kind; Gardiner (2019) also outlines such a view. Because it changes the evidential strength required, rather than only the degree of probabilistic support, this mechanism can address moral qualms with the type of evidence used.…”

“…11As will emerge over the course of this article, there are many different ways to develop this idea, and the ‘stakes’ terminology is more fitting for some varieties of this view than others. I will continue to use it loosely, though, to refer to contexts identified by a view as ones in which the more demanding epistemic standards are relevant. For an indicative but probably not exhaustive list, variants of this thesis have recently been defended by Basu (2019a, 2019b, in press), Basu and Schroeder (2019), Bolinger (2018), Buchak (2014), Fritz (2017), Guerrero (in press), Johnson‐King and Babic (in press), Moss (2018a, 2018b), Pace (2011), and Schroeder (2018), and criticized by Begby (2018), Enoch (2016), Fritz (2019), Gardiner (2018, 2019), Jackson (2018), Worsnip (2020). …”

Belief, credence, and moral encroachment

“…8 This distinction between moderate and radical moral encroachment first appears inFritz (2019). The distinction also appears (sometimes under a different name) in the taxonomies offered byGardiner (2020) andBolinger (forthcoming). Note that radical moral encroachers need not take on a commitment that Moss (2018b: p. 915) describes as both radical and unattractive: the commitment that even moral considerations that do not depend on the truth or falsehood of belief can make a difference to that belief's epistemic status.…”