(The possibility of) responsibility for delusions

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this paper I argue that a prominent account of doxastic responsibility, Epistemic Reasons-Responsiveness can be amended to avoid two problems with its treatment of delusions. I do so by appealing to Carolina Flores’ recent work on the evidence-responsiveness of delusions: by excluding what Flores calls masking factors from the mechanism of reasons-responsiveness, we are able to accommodate the possibility for individuals with delusions to be responsible for their belief. I conclude by motivating that this possibility is one we should care about.KEYWORDS: Delusionsdoxastic responsibilityreasons-responsivenessirrationality AcknowledgementsI am indebted to two anonymous referees for their invaluable comments and challenges on two previous versions of this paper. My thanks also to Miriam Schleifer McCormick for reading and sharing her insights on an early draft. I am thankful to audiences at The Value of Irrationality workshop (University of Zurich), the Responsibility, Psychopathology & Stigma conference (University of Antwerp), and the DGPhil 7th Graduate Conference (University of Erlangen) for their feedback on earlier version of this work.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1. For the sake of this discussion, I take delusions to be beliefs, following Bortolotti (Citation2012) and Bayne and Pacherie (Citation2005). This view about the nature of delusions is of course debated. This assumption is justified insofar the discussion at hand is only relevant under this assumption, reasons-responsiveness being a property of beliefs and not of acceptances (Dub, Citation2017; Frankish, Citation2009, Citation2012), imaginings (Currie & Ravenscroft, Citation2002), or other entities delusions are sometimes thought to be.2. Against this classic tenet of contemporary epistemology, some philosophers defend a voluntarist position (Peels, Citation2015; Steup, Citation2017).3. McHugh (Citation2017), p. 27514. McHugh (Citation2017), p. 27515. McHugh, following Schleifer McCormick (Citation2011; Schleifer McCormick, Citation2014), Steup (Citation2008) and the original instigators of the Reasons-Responsiveness view, Fischer and Ravizza (Citation1998).6. I suspect that this worry touches on the very much debated question of epistemic agency. Briefly put, the question, “is there genuine epistemic agency?” or put differently, “do we believe for reasons in the same way we act and decide for reasons?” is a dividing and multifaceted one. Engaging with this question is beyond both the scope and the relevance of the present work. Therefore, I prefer not to stir up the hornet’s nest. Let me simply stress that this paper assumes with other scholars working on doxastic responsibility that there is epistemic agency.7. The individuation of mechanism raises, (in)famously, some thorny questions (Ginet, Citation2006; McKenna, Citation2013). They strongly parallel questions involved in what is known in epistemology as the problem of generality (Conee & Feldman, Citation1998; Goldman, Citation1979). The question at play being: are there principled criteria that delimitate what constitute one kind of mechanism (of belief formation) over another? The same question applies to cases of reasons-responsive actions, which Fischer and Ravizza discuss in the original statement of their view (Fischer & Ravizza, Citation1998, p. 39). Thus, this problem is not specific to my discussion of delusion, but a general problem for defenders of the reasons-responsiveness view of responsibility, in ethics and in epistemology, and for reliabilists, in epistemology.8. In Flores (Citation2021), p. 6312. There Flores discusses a case study investigated by (McKay & Cipolotti, Citation2007).9. “My senses were all different […] There was this feeling of being contracted, not really embodying my body, feelings of touch and being outside … maybe normally you would feel a bit of wind on your cheek … but all these things felt different. The only experience that was near it, I would say, would be being really jetlagged – up all night and then you get up and you get that sort of spongy head going on” (Freeman, Citation2018).10. McHugh (Citation2017), p. 275111. McHugh (Citation2017), p. 275112. It should be noted that Vincent’s account targets moral responsibility rather than doxastic responsibility.13. For example (my emphasis).“Dogs and cats, young children, the insane, and severely mentally retarded adults have potentially effective wills, and yet we do not regard them as responsible beings” (Wolf, Citation1990, p. 7).“[T]here are more systematic and persistent states that render a person’s normal condition one in which it would be unfair to hold the person morally accountable; here one might include, for example, insanity or mental illness, extreme youth, psychopathy, and the effects of systematic behavior control or conditioning” (Wallace, Citation1994, p. 155).“When you deliberate about whether to give 5% of your salary to the United Way and consider reasons on both sides, and your decision to give the money is not induced by hypnosis, brainwashing, direct manipulation, psychotic impulses, and so forth, we think that you can legitimately be praised for your charitable action. Insofar as we can identify no responsibility-undermining factor at work in your decision and action, we are inclined to hold you morally responsible” (Fischer & Ravizza, Citation1998, p. 36).“[W]hy does insanity exempt one from responsibility, while foolishness does not?” (Franklin, Citation2013, p. 481)Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [P500PH_210961].