Staying true with the help of others: doxastic self-control through interpersonal commitment

Abstract

I explore the possibility and rationality of interpersonal mechanisms of doxastic self-control, that is, ways in which individuals can make use of other people in order to get themselves to stick to their beliefs. I look, in particular, at two ways in which people can make interpersonal epistemic commitments, and thereby willingly undertake accountability to others, in order to get themselves to maintain their beliefs in the face of anticipated “epistemic temptations”. The first way is through the avowal of belief, and the second is through the establishment of collective belief. I argue that both of these forms of interpersonal epistemic commitment can function as effective tools for doxastic self-control, and, moreover, that the control they facilitate should not be dismissed as irrational from an epistemic perspective.

Keywords:

• doxastic self-control
• interpersonal commitment
• avowal
• collective belief
• epistemic temptation

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to audiences in St Andrews, Vienna and Hradec Kralove, as well as two anonymous reviewers for Philosophical Explorations, for very helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Leo Townsend is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna. He works on social epistemology and collective intentionality, and has published articles on trust, group agency, group speech, and collective belief.

Notes

1 See Paul (2015a, 2015b).

2 See note 11 below for references.

3 See, e.g., Heil (1984) and Mele (1987).

4 Classic arguments can be found in Williams (1973), who claims believing at will is conceptually impossible, and Alston (1988), who claims it is psychologically impossible.

5 These are the labels Peels (2017, Ch. 2) uses in his illuminating discussion of Alston’s distinction.

6 See Ginet (2001), Steup (2012) and Peels (2015) for three recent exceptions.

7 See e.g., Heil (1992), Feldman (2000), Nottelmann (2007). Interestingly, Peels (2017, 69) suggests indirect control is more frequently exercised for belief maintenance than belief formation.

8 Peels (2017) has argued that it is in virtue of our doxastic influence that we are fit to be held responsible for our beliefs. A number of others have made similar arguments using some notion of “control” that would, in terms of Alston’s distinction, more properly be called doxastic influence – see, e.g., Leon (2002), Pamela Hieronymi’s notion of “evaluative control” (2006, 2014) and Miriam Schleifer McCormick’s notion of doxastic “guidance control” (2015).

9 In a similar vein, Bernard Williams argues that we “construct our beliefs” and “steady our minds” because of the “presence and needs of other people”:

[When] we are asked what our belief is, we may simply come out with an expression of one that is sincere in the most basic sense of its being spontaneous and uninhibited, and that fact itself will encourage us to stand by it, to present ourselves and go on presenting ourselves as people who have that view. (Williams 2002, 193)

10 Note that reporting and avowing do not exclude one another. On the contrary, when one reports one typically also avows, except that the content of one’s report and one’s avowal differ. For example, when one reports on some state of the world (say, that it is raining), then one typically avows the belief that the world is in that state (the belief that it is raining). In just the same way, when one reports that one believes that p, one (typically) thereby avows the second-order belief that one believes that p.

11 It is worth noting that Pettit’s idea, that avowal serves to stabilize attitudes, is at least in part an empirical claim. Are there empirical studies that support it? Pettit himself does not explicitly refer to any such data, but I think there is in fact a good deal of empirical literature that is in line with his proposal. Some of this literature concerns the way people shape or control their own minds by ascribing attitudes to themselves: put simply, people tend to form, maintain or go along with the attitudes that they have ascribed to themselves, even in cases where they did not, prior to the ascription, have the attitude ascribed. This is supported by so-called “confabulation” cases, in which subjects are led to falsely self-ascribe a preference, intention or desire, and then proceed to honour the self-ascribed attitude in their ongoing thought and behavior (see e.g., Gazzaniga 1985). According to Carruthers (2009, 127), “attributions of mental states, even if initially confabulated, are likely to be self-fulfilling. This is because agents will feel obliged to act in ways that are consistent with the mental states that they have attributed to themselves.”

Also relevant to Pettit’s claim are the numerous social psychological studies that investigate how making various kinds of verbal commitment increases the likelihood of the speaker behaving and thinking in line with those commitments. For example, there are studies showing that people are more likely to follow through on medical treatment when they are made to promise they will do so (Kulik and Carlino 1987); there is research demonstrating the efficacy of pledges in fostering healthier food purchasing (Schwartz et al. 2014); there are studies that indicate that recycling practices and pro-recycling attitudes can be promoted by getting people to enter written agreements (Schultz, Oskamp, and Mainieri 1995); and there are studies that have shown the efficacy of oath-taking in inducing truthfulness (Jacquemet et al. 2013). The idea behind many of these studies is that people have a basic drive or bias towards consistency, and hence will be strongly motivated to think and act in line with their professed commitments. As Cialdini (2009, 52) puts it: “Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.” (Thanks to a reviewer for encouraging me to address this point.)

12 Gilbert (1987, 1994, 2002a), Gilbert and Pilchman (2014).

13 Gilbert (2002b).

14 One might wonder what collective belief really amounts to, given that it does not require the parties to hold that belief themselves. I think Gilbert’s answer to this question would be that collective belief amounts to a complex normative situation – a package of rights and responsibilities on the part of the parties to a collective belief – that is brought into existence by the formation of a joint commitment. A number of philosophers have found this kind of response unsatisfying, however. More specifically, they do not see why collective belief should be called “belief” at all, since it does not aim at truth and can be formed voluntarily (see esp. Wray 2001; Meijers 2003). In recent work, Gilbert has conceded some of this criticism (Gilbert and Pilchman 2014) and accepted that collective belief may not share all the features of individual belief. I do not think this debate over whether collective belief is belief properly so-called affects my discussion here. The question is simply whether the phenomenon described and analysed by Gilbert (whether or not we wish to label it collective belief) can be mobilized by individuals as a tool for doxastic self-control.

15 Like Pettit, Gilbert does not cite empirical literature in support of her claim that collective belief tends to have a profound influence on individual belief. Although it is not exactly clear just what relation it bears to Gilbert’s notion of collective belief, some relevant empirical research may be found within the literature on “groupthink” (Janis 1982; Esser 1998). Groupthink concerns the way in which certain groups or organizations establish consensus by avoiding conflict and suppressing dissenting views. There is evidence that suggests that groupthink can lead not just to the behavioural compliance of members with the established group views but also to their “internalization” of these views. In other words, groupthink can lead members to bring their attitudes into line with the collectively-held attitudes (see McCauley 1989). According to Janis (1971, 85), “The more cohesive the group, the greater the inner compulsion on the part of each member to avoid creating disunity, which inclines him to believe in the soundness of whatever proposals are promoted by the leader or by a majority of the group’s members.”

16 See esp. Hieronymi (2005). It should be pointed out that, in contrast to some even stricter evidentialists, Hieronymi does accept that the wrong kind of reasons for belief are still genuine reasons for belief (see Reisner 2009, who for this reasons dubs Hieronymi an “ecumenical evidentialist”).

17 I am grateful to a reviewer for suggesting this line of reasoning.

18 In (Townsend forthcoming) I criticize Pettit for neglecting this aspect of epistemic answerability.

19 Thanks to a reviewer for suggesting this point.

20 In previous work (Townsend 2016) I have criticized Gilbert’s account of collective belief for its failure to accommodate this epistemic kind of answerability.

Additional information

Funding

I am grateful to the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for funding my research [grant number I 3068 - G24].