Intellectual responsibility

Short description: Reflectiveness about truth of beliefs

Intellectual responsibility (also known as epistemic responsibility) is the quality of being adequately reflective about the truth of one's beliefs.[1] People are intellectually responsible if they have tried hard enough to be reflective about the truth of their beliefs, aiming not to miss any information that would cause them to abandon those beliefs as false.[1]

Intellectual responsibility is related to epistemic justification, or justification of one's beliefs, and to the ethics of belief.[2] Thomas Ash, following Roderick Chisholm, said "that intellectual responsibility can be understood as a matter of fulfilling one's intellectual duties or requirements. And this is just how justification has been understood, on perhaps the most historically prominent conception of it."[2] Ash considered this to be an "important reason to think that intellectual responsibility is both necessary and sufficient for justification".[2] According to Frederick F. Schmitt, "the conception of justified belief as epistemically responsible belief has been endorsed by a number of philosophers, including Roderick Chisholm (1977), Hilary Kornblith (1983), and Lorraine Code (1983)."[2][3]

Robert Audi said that people need "standards to guide an intellectually rigorous search for a mean between excessive credulity [believing too much that is false] and indiscriminate skepticism [believing too little that is true]", and he suggested five standards:[4]

1. Seeking evidence for and counterevidence against propositions to be believed
2. Seeking reflective equilibrium, the integration and coherence of beliefs
3. Identifying and focusing on the grounds for belief
4. Making interpersonal comparisons in beliefs and grounds for them
5. Seeking proportionality in degree of conviction and rectifying disproportions

## Responsibility of intellectuals

A separate concept was introduced by the linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky in an essay published as a special supplement by The New York Review of Books on 23 February 1967, entitled "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Chomsky argued that intellectuals should make themselves responsible for searching for the truth and the exposing of lies.

## See also

* Philosophy:Epistemic virtue - Concept in philosophy
* Philosophy:I'm entitled to my opinion - Informal fallacy
* Philosophy:Intellectual virtue - Qualities of mind and character

## Notes

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ash, Thomas (2008). "What is intellectual responsibility?". http://www.philosofiles.com/epistemology/intellectual_responsibility/the_concept/what_is_intellectual_responsibility.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Ash, Thomas (2008). "Responsibility, justification and knowledge". http://www.philosofiles.com/epistemology/intellectual_responsibility/the_concept/responsibility_justification_and_knowledge.
3. ↑ Schmitt, Frederick (1993). "Epistemic perspectivism". in Heil, John. Rationality, morality and self-interest: essays honoring Mark Carl Overvold. Studies in epistemology and cognitive theory. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 9780847677627. OCLC 26810408.
4. ↑ Audi, Robert (January 2011). "The ethics of belief and the morality of action: intellectual responsibility and rational disagreement". Philosophy 86 (1): 5–29. doi:10.1017/S0031819110000586.

## Further reading

* Blair, J. Anthony (2012). "Is there an obligation to reason well?". Groundwork in the theory of argumentation: selected papers of J. Anthony Blair. Argumentation library. 21. Dordrecht; New York: Springer. pp. 3–12. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-2363-4. ISBN 9789400723627. OCLC 793386627.
* Chisholm, Roderick M. (1977). "The terms of epistemic appraisal". Theory of knowledge. Prentice-Hall foundations of philosophy series (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. pp. 5–15. ISBN 0139141685. OCLC 2463450. https://archive.org/details/theoryofknowledg0000chis_b8e8/page/5.
* Chomsky, Noam (2017). The responsibility of intellectuals. New York: The New Press. ISBN 9781620973431. OCLC 974700058.
* Code, Lorraine (1987). Epistemic responsibility. Hanover, NH: Published for Brown University Press by University Press of New England. ISBN 087451407X. OCLC 15486024. https://archive.org/details/epistemicrespons0000code.
* Godden, David (2014). "Teaching rational entitlement and responsibility: a Socratic exercise". Informal Logic 34 (1): 124–151. doi:10.22329/il.v34i1.3882.
* Hook, Sidney (1980). "The ethics of controversy". Philosophy and public policy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 117–123. ISBN 0809309378. OCLC 5171207. https://archive.org/details/philosophypublic0000hook/page/117.
* Hountondji, Paulin J. (November 1996). "Intellectual responsibility: implications for thought and action today". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 70 (2): 77–92. doi:10.2307/3131040.
* Kornblith, Hilary (January 1983). "Justified belief and epistemically responsible action". The Philosophical Review 92 (1): 33–48. doi:10.2307/2184520.
* McCain, Kevin; Stapleford, Scott, eds (2020). Epistemic duties: new arguments, new angles. Routledge studies in epistemology. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429030215. ISBN 9780367141103. OCLC 1220924816.
* Rockmore, Tom (April 1993). "Philosophy, literature, and intellectual responsibility". American Philosophical Quarterly 30 (2): 109--121.
* Rorty, Richard (May 1996). "Religious faith, intellectual responsibility, and romance". American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 17 (2): 121–140.
* Schmidt, Sebastian (2025). Responsibility for rationality: foundations of an ethics of mind. Routledge studies in epistemology. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003382973. ISBN 9781032467177. OCLC 1457081417. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/95790.
* Smith, Holly (October 1983). "Culpable ignorance". The Philosophical Review 92 (4): 543–571. doi:10.2307/2184880. http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/hsmith/Papers/culpable.pdf.
* Stevenson, J. T. (1975). "On doxastic responsibility". in Lehrer, Keith. Analysis and metaphysics: essays in honor of R. M. Chisholm. Philosophical studies series in philosophy. 4. Dordrecht; Boston: D. Reidel. pp. 229–253. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-9098-8_13. ISBN 9027705712. OCLC 1254917.

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Epistemology

Epistemologists|

* Thomas Aquinas
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Concepts|

* A priori knowledge
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Related articles|

* Outline of epistemology
* Alethiology
* Faith and rationality
* Formal epistemology
* Meta-epistemology
* Philosophy of perception
* Philosophy of science
* Social epistemology

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