Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wpx84 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-26T09:04:17.360Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Just Say ‘No’: Obligations to Voice Disagreement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2018

Casey Rebecca Johnson*
Affiliation:
University of Idaho

Abstract

It is uncontroversial that we sometimes have moral obligations to voice our disagreements, when, for example, the stakes are high and a wrong course of action will be pursued. But might we sometimes also have epistemic obligations to voice disagreements? In this paper, I will argue that we sometimes do. In other words, sometimes, to be behaving as we ought, qua epistemic agents, we must not only disagree with an interlocutor who has voiced some disagreed-with content but must also testify to this disagreement. This is surprising given that norms on testimony are generally taken to be permissive, and epistemic obligations are usually taken to be negative. In this paper I will discuss some occasions in which epistemic obligations to testify may arise, and I will attempt to investigate the nature of these obligations. I'll briefly discuss the relationship between epistemic and moral norms. I'll offer an account of what it takes to discharge epistemic obligations to testify. Finally, I'll look at some accounts of epistemic obligation that might explain these obligations.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Herrnstein, Richard J. and Murray, Charles, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010)Google Scholar.

2 Beckwith, Jon and Huang, Franklin, ‘Should we make a fuss? A case for social responsibility in science.Nature biotechnology 23.12 (2005), 14791480CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Panofsky, Aaron, Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Saul, Jennifer M., Lying, Misleading, and What is Said: An Exploration in Philosophy of Language and in Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Here I'm moving between ‘having x-type reasons to φ’ and ‘having x-type obligations to φ’. I recognize that these are importantly different in some literatures. What I mean, in this context, is that having an obligation to φ means that failing to φ constitutes a failing to do what one ought.

6 That is, their epistemic mistake cannot be explained in terms of mistakenly forming beliefs.

7 Nelson, Mark T., ‘We Have No Positive Epistemic Duties.Mind 119.473 (2010), 83102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goggans, Phil, ‘Epistemic obligations and doxastic voluntarism’, Analysis 51.2 (1991), 102105CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Notable exceptions are Matthew Chrisman's middle road between doxastic involuntarism and epistemic deontology, Edward Hinchman's paper on intra- vs. inter-personal epistemic obligations, and Matthew Sample's work on the epistemic obligations of scientists. See Chrisman, Matthew, ‘Ought to Believe’, Journal of Philosophy 105.7 (2008), 346370CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hinchman, Edward, ‘Reflection, Disagreement, and Context’, American Philosophical Quarterly 49.2 (2012), 95Google Scholar; Sample, Matthew, ‘Stanford's Unconceived Alternatives from the Perspective of Epistemic Obligations’, Philosophy of Science 82.5 (2015), 856866CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Or presupposed, or implied, etc. See section 5 for more on this.

9 After all, the obligation to feed the hungry isn't plausibly a culinary obligation.

10 If all cases have moral stakes (to some extent), then all we need is for there to be a mismatch between the level or gravity of the moral stakes and the strength of the obligation. So a case with low-grade moral stakes but strong obligations will work.

11 Fricker, Miranda, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 In addition to being unnecessary in some cases, this kind of direct rebuttal is probably not effective in many cases. Direct rebuttals may prompt defensiveness rather than uptake or reasonable conversation. However, efficacy may or may not be at issue, as we'll see below.

13 Lewis, David, ‘Scorekeeping in a Language Game’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979), 339359CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Elisabeth, , Camp, , ‘Contextualism, metaphor, and what is said’, Mind and Language 21.3 (2006), 280309CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Recanati, , François, , ‘What is said.Synthese 128.1–2 (2001), 7591CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Saul, Jennifer M.,. ‘Speaker Meaning, What is Said, and What is Implicated.Noûs 36.2 (2002), 228248CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saul, Lying, Misleading, and What is Said; Grice, H. P., ‘Meaning’, Philosophical Review 66.3 (1957), 377388CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Stalnaker, Robert, ‘Common ground’, Linguistics and Philosophy 25.5 (2002), 701721CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Perhaps we ought to understand academia (or science or genetics) as a single long extended conversation.

17 As mentioned above, an agent need not voice her disagreement in a way that registers that disagreement with every participant. It might well be that a particular agent can voice her disagreement with something a previous speaker has said in a way that the speaker himself does not recognize. If other participants in the conversation do recognize this, she might well have discharged her obligation.

18 Fricker, Epistemic Injustice.

19 Elgin, Catherine Z., ‘Science, ethics and education’, Theory and Research in Education 9.3 (2011), 251263, at 252Google Scholar.

20 Elgin, Catherine Z., ‘Understanding: Art and Science’, Midwest Studies In Philosophy 16.1 (1991), 196208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Panofsky. Misbehaving Science.

22 Hinchman, Edward, ‘Telling as inviting to trust’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70.3 (2005), 562587CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moran, Richard, ‘Getting Told and Being Believed,’ Philosophers' Imprint 5.5 (2005), 129Google Scholar.

23 I am grateful to Nathan Sheff and Graham Hubbs for helpful discussions of the Gilbert-inspired source.

24 Gilbert, Margaret, ‘Rationality in Collective Action’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36.1 (2006), 317CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 This does not mean, of course, that joint commitments always go smoothly. Sometimes, she says, ‘discussion among the parties may be called for in order that individual efforts are effective’. And that discussion, presumably, would sometimes involve voicing disagreements. See Gilbert, ‘Rationality in collective action’, 8

26 Bratman, Michael, ‘Shared Cooperative Activity’, The Philosophical Review 101.2 (1992), 327341CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Bratman and Gilbert don't fully agree about the nature of shared intentionality, but nothing in Gilbert precludes the use of the commitment to mutual support, here.

28 Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869)Google Scholar.

29 Mill, On Liberty, 37–39.

30 For further discussion of this, see Johnson, Casey Rebecca, ‘For the Sake of Argument: The Nature and Extent of Our Obligation to Voice Disagreement’ in Voicing Dissent (London: Routledge, 2018), 105116CrossRefGoogle Scholar