“You are responsible for you having accurate beliefs.”
Epistemic responsibility refers to the idea that it is on you to have true beliefs. The concept is motivated by the following two applications.
In discussions
Sometimes in discussions people are in a combative “1v1 mode”, where they try to convince the other person of their position and defend their own position, in contrast to a cooperative “2v0 mode” where they share their beliefs and try to figure out what’s true. See the soldier mindset vs. the scout mindset.
This may be framed in terms of epistemic responsibility: If you accept that “It is (solely) my responsibility that I have accurate beliefs”, the conversation naturally becomes less about winning and more about having better beliefs afterwards. That is, a shift from “darn, my conversation partner is so wrong, how do I explain it to them” to “let me see if the other person has valuable points, or if they can explain how I could be wrong about this”.
In particular, from this viewpoint it sounds a bit odd if one says the phrase “that doesn’t convince me” when presented with an argument, as it’s not on the other person to convince you of something.
Note: This doesn’t mean that you have to be especially cooperative in the conversation. It is your responsibility that you have true beliefs, not that you both have. If you end up being less wrong, success. If the other person doesn’t, that’s on them :-)
Trusting experts
There’s a question Alice wants to know the answer to. Unfortunately, the question is too difficult for Alice to find out the answer herself. Hence she defers to experts, and ultimately believes what Bob-the-expert says.
Later, it turns out that Bob was wrong. How does Alice react?
A bad reaction is to be angry at Bob and throw rotten tomatoes at him.
Under the epistemic responsibility frame, the proper reaction is “Huh, I trusted the wrong expert. Oops. What went wrong, and how do I better defer to experts next time?”
When (not) to use the frame
I find the concept to be useful when revising your own beliefs, as in the above examples of discussions and expert-deferring.
One limitation is that belief-revising often happens via interpersonal communication, whereas epistemic responsibility is individualistic. So while “my aim is to improve my beliefs” is a better starting point for conversations than “my aim is to win”, this is still not ideal, and epistemic responsibility is to be used with a sense of cooperativeness or other virtues.
Another limitation is that “everyone is responsible for themselves” is a bad norm for a community/society, and this is true of epistemic responsibility as well.
I’d say that the concept of epistemic responsibility is mostly for personal use. I think that especially the strongest versions of epistemic responsibility (heroic epistemic responsibility?), where you are the sole person responsible for you having true beliefs and where any mistakes are your fault, are something you shouldn’t demand of others. For example, I feel like a teacher has a lot of epistemic responsibility on the behalf of their students (and there are other types of responsibilities going on here).
Or whatever, use it how you want—it’s on you to use it properly.
Epistemic responsibility
“You are responsible for you having accurate beliefs.”
Epistemic responsibility refers to the idea that it is on you to have true beliefs. The concept is motivated by the following two applications.
In discussions
Sometimes in discussions people are in a combative “1v1 mode”, where they try to convince the other person of their position and defend their own position, in contrast to a cooperative “2v0 mode” where they share their beliefs and try to figure out what’s true. See the soldier mindset vs. the scout mindset.
This may be framed in terms of epistemic responsibility: If you accept that “It is (solely) my responsibility that I have accurate beliefs”, the conversation naturally becomes less about winning and more about having better beliefs afterwards. That is, a shift from “darn, my conversation partner is so wrong, how do I explain it to them” to “let me see if the other person has valuable points, or if they can explain how I could be wrong about this”.
In particular, from this viewpoint it sounds a bit odd if one says the phrase “that doesn’t convince me” when presented with an argument, as it’s not on the other person to convince you of something.
Note: This doesn’t mean that you have to be especially cooperative in the conversation. It is your responsibility that you have true beliefs, not that you both have. If you end up being less wrong, success. If the other person doesn’t, that’s on them :-)
Trusting experts
There’s a question Alice wants to know the answer to. Unfortunately, the question is too difficult for Alice to find out the answer herself. Hence she defers to experts, and ultimately believes what Bob-the-expert says.
Later, it turns out that Bob was wrong. How does Alice react?
A bad reaction is to be angry at Bob and throw rotten tomatoes at him.
Under the epistemic responsibility frame, the proper reaction is “Huh, I trusted the wrong expert. Oops. What went wrong, and how do I better defer to experts next time?”
When (not) to use the frame
I find the concept to be useful when revising your own beliefs, as in the above examples of discussions and expert-deferring.
One limitation is that belief-revising often happens via interpersonal communication, whereas epistemic responsibility is individualistic. So while “my aim is to improve my beliefs” is a better starting point for conversations than “my aim is to win”, this is still not ideal, and epistemic responsibility is to be used with a sense of cooperativeness or other virtues.
Another limitation is that “everyone is responsible for themselves” is a bad norm for a community/society, and this is true of epistemic responsibility as well.
I’d say that the concept of epistemic responsibility is mostly for personal use. I think that especially the strongest versions of epistemic responsibility (heroic epistemic responsibility?), where you are the sole person responsible for you having true beliefs and where any mistakes are your fault, are something you shouldn’t demand of others. For example, I feel like a teacher has a lot of epistemic responsibility on the behalf of their students (and there are other types of responsibilities going on here).
Or whatever, use it how you want—it’s on you to use it properly.