The Ethics of Belief Debate and the Norm of Teaching

Abstract

The debate about the ethics of belief is a classic and it has given rise to wide-ranging debates in epistemology, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, as well as in ethics. In epistemology, the question is what the norms of belief are — should one believe what is true, what is well-evidenced, what is pragmatic or what? — and this question translates, in the philosophy of language, to a parallel question regarding what one should assert. Given that teaching often works through assertion, it deserves to be asked in similar vein what the norms of teaching are, and in this paper Ben Kotzee explores the touchpoints between the ethics of belief, the ethics of assertion, and the ethics of teaching. He examines the ways in which teaching should be governed by the same norms as those that govern belief and assertions. He argues that the strongest contender to be the norm of teaching is a knowledge norm.