Autonomy, Agency, and the Value of Enduring Beliefs (original) (raw)

2010, Canadian Journal of Philosophy

There has been much recent interest in questions of value in epistemology (for a thorough overview of this work, see Pritchard 2007), and in what follows I argue that epistemologists concerned with the value of true beliefs and knowledge would do well to devote attention to the enduring nature of beliefs, and in particular to the essential role that they play in constituting agents themselves. I begin by considering an analogy commonly drawn by epistemologists between acts in the domain of ethics and beliefs in the domain of epistemology, and argue that it is flawed in important respects. I propose that a better, more fruitful analogue for belief would be desire, or a similarly enduring state of an agent. This revision of a commonly used analogy may be of some value in itself, but I further consider how focusing excessively upon the belief-act analogy (with its implicit emphasis on the process of belief-formation) can lead to flaws or shortcomings in our epistemic value theorizing. Still, this initial work on analogies is intended as a preliminary step, providing an entryway to the more fundamental proposal that we ought to devote greater attention to the enduring nature of beliefs-a nature not captured by the belief-act analogy. I argue that our enduring beliefs help to make us who we are as agents, and it should not be surprising to find significant value to our beliefs arising through this essential, constitutive role. In particular, I argue that enduring, accessible beliefs are crucial to the autonomy, self-control, and authenticity of agents. We would lack effective practical identities without such beliefs. By seeing (i) that the common belief-act analogy can lead us astray by focusing excessively on the moment of belief-formation (rather than on beliefs as enduring states of agents), and (ii) that agents require enduring, accessible beliefs in order to possess effective practical identities, we are