The Importance of Forgetting

Abstract

Morality bears on what we should forget. Some aspects of our identity are meant to be forgotten and there is a distinctive harm that accompanies the permanence of some content about us, content that prompts a duty to forget. To make the case that forgetting is an integral part of our moral duties to others, the paper proceeds as follows. In §1, I make the case that forgetting is morally evaluable and I survey three kinds of forgetting: no-trace forgetting, archival forgetting, and siloing. In §2, I turn to how we practice these forms of forgetting in our everyday lives and the goods these practices facilitate by drawing on examples ranging from the expunging of juvenile arrest records to the right to privacy. In §3, I turn to how my account can help us both recognize and address a heretofore neglected source of harm caused by technology and big data. In §4, I end by addressing the concern that we lack control over forgetting and thus can't be required to forget. I argue this challenge can be answered, but there's a harder challenge that can't. Forgetting is under threat. To address this challenge and preserve forgetting, we must change the world.

The Morality of Belief I: How Beliefs Wrong

“…When introducing doxastic wronging, Rima Basu and Mark Schroeder (2019) note that when beliefs wrong they generally have three hallmarks. They write:

First, doxastic wrongs are directed.

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“…Finally, I will survey one more route for explaining how attitudinal obligations regarding what we believe of others can arise, one that arises from our rights more generally. Both Rima Basu (2021, 2022) and Lauritz Munch (2021) have argued that the possibility of doxastic duties can follow from a right to privacy 15 . As David Velleman (2001) and Andrei Marmor (2015) have noted regarding the right to privacy, we each have a fundamental interest in controlling, shaping, and maintaining our identity and how we present ourselves to others.…”

“…17 17 Basu (2022) similarly argues that this right to privacy can also give rise to a right to be forgotten. …”

Forgetting to Un-Forgive

“…In contrast, philosophers often argue that forgiveness requires that a victim act for reasons to revise their attitudes toward the offender. 2 There is much debate about what kinds of reasons can justify forgiveness. On one popular approach, an offender's remorse functions as a reason to forgive, either because it indicates that the offender's wrongdoing is no longer a threat to the victim (Hampton 1988;Hieronymi 2001), or that the offender and victim have aligned their moral understandings (Fricker 2018(Fricker , 2021, or that the offender has had a change of heart (Milam 2019).…”

Morality of Belief II: Three Challenges and An Extension

“…9 9 See also Basu (2022) where the case has been made that there are ways of forgetting and remembering that can wrong. See also Basu (forthcoming) for an account of how expectations can wrong. …”