Epistemic Innocence and the Ethics of Stereotypes

Chapter 4 develops a challenge to two ideas that will be tempting to some: (i) harbouring and applying social attitudes that reflect social realities can only be good from an epistemic perspective, and (ii) harbouring and applying social attitudes that fail to reflect social realities can only be bad from an epistemic perspective. It is shown first that there can be epistemic costs associated with stereotyping, even where a stereotype reflects an aspect of social reality. Then it is argued that there can be epistemic benefits associated with having social attitudes that fail to reflect these realities where the alternative would be to suffer the epistemic costs of stereotyping. It is argued that social attitudes that are egalitarian but fail to reflect social realities can be epistemically innocent and the lesser of two epistemic evils. Finally, the chapter outlines some implications of these points for existing theories of the ethics of stereotyping, accounts of epistemic injustice and moral encroachment views.

Confabulated Explanations

In this chapter, the author argues that the ill-grounded explanations agents sincerely offer for their choices have the potential for epistemic innocence. Such explanations are not based on evidence about the causes of the agents’ behaviour and typically turn out to be inaccurate. That is because agents tend to underestimate the role of priming effects, implicit biases, and basic emotional reactions in their decision making. However, offering explanations for their choices, even when the explanations are ill-grounded, enables them to share information about their choices with peers, facilitating peer feedback and self-reflection. Moreover, by providing plausible explanations for their behaviour—rather than acknowledging the influence of factors that cannot be easily controlled—agents preserve a sense of themselves as competent and largely coherent decision makers, which can improve their decision making.

Optimistically Biased Beliefs

In this chapter, the author argues that optimistically biased beliefs that agents tend to have about themselves and their future have the potential for epistemic innocence. Such beliefs—inflated beliefs about the agent’s self-worth and rosy predictions about the agent’s health prospects or romantic relationships—are not sufficiently sensitive to the evidence available to the agent and count both as ill-grounded and impervious to counterevidence. However, optimistic beliefs also play a role in supporting agency. When agents believe that they are skilled and that things are going to go well for them, they are more motivated to continue to pursue their goals in the face of inevitable obstacles and setbacks. Persistence in goal pursuit sometimes translates in successful performance. Moreover, optimistic agents are more motivated to change their behaviour to achieve the goals they believe to be attainable, and thus cope better with crises in their health or relationships.

Elaborated Delusional Beliefs

In this chapter, the author argues that delusional beliefs that are elaborated—often emerging in people who attract a diagnosis of schizophrenia—have the potential for epistemic innocence. Delusional beliefs are strenuously resistant to counterevidence. However, when they are adopted to explain a puzzling experience that might compromise the agents’ capacity to interact with their environment, delusional beliefs contribute to restoring some aspects of cognitive performance by temporarily reducing anxiety. On the prediction-error theory of delusion formation, it is further believed that the adoption of a delusional explanation helps resume the processes of automated learning compromised by inaccurate prediction-error signalling. Depending on their content, some delusional beliefs may also support an attitude of curiosity and self-efficacy that is more conducive to the acquisition of new information than the previous state of uncertainty and self-doubt.

The Significance of Epistemic Innocence

In the concluding chapter, the author revisits the significance of the epistemic innocence framework in the light of the applications of epistemic innocence to distorted memory beliefs, confabulated explanations, elaborated delusional beliefs, motivated delusional beliefs, and optimistically biased beliefs in the preceding chapters. The somewhat counterintuitive conclusion is that some of the beliefs regarded as paradigmatic instances of epistemic irrationality can be attributed significant epistemic benefits, in the sense that they either enhance or restore epistemic functionality. The wider implications of the epistemic innocence project for research in philosophy and psychology are reviewed, and the limitations acknowledged.

Motivated Delusional Beliefs

In this chapter, the author argues that monothematic delusions that have been construed as responses to trauma or adversity have the potential for epistemic innocence. So-called ‘motivated’ delusions are irrational because they are the output of a mechanism enabling an agent’s desires to influence the agent’s beliefs, independent of the evidence available. Two examples are discussed in the chapter, erotomania and anosognosia. It is found that the adoption of motivated delusions contributes to managing negative emotions that could otherwise become overwhelming and negatively affect the agent’s epistemic functionality by causing depression. By presenting reality as better than it is, the motivated delusion prevents the agent’s disengagement from the surrounding environment and can be seen as temporarily beneficial.

Distorted Memory Beliefs

In this chapter, the author argues that beliefs about the past that are based on distorted autobiographical memories have the potential for epistemic innocence. The focus is on beliefs about the past that people report in the context of dementia and other conditions in which autobiographical memory is severely compromised. Such beliefs may embellish people’s past achievements or present circumstances, or simply be inconsistent with life events that people can no longer remember. Having memory beliefs to report increases the opportunity for socialisation and information exchange with peers, making content available for sharing and enabling feedback on it. More important still, the maintenance and reporting of memory beliefs about the autobiographical past, when these are not entirely fabricated and contain a grain of truth, enable the retention of key self-related information that would otherwise be threatened by progressive memory loss.

The Epistemic Innocence Project

Human agents do not simply survive but navigate their world quite successfully despite being inclined to adopt and hang onto irrational beliefs. In this introductory chapter, the author justifies the new framework of epistemic innocence as an attempt to make sense of the idea that our undesirable and at times cringeworthy irrationality may be instrumental to succeed as imperfect agents. The challenge is to create the conceptual resources for evaluating the epistemic status of beliefs that violate standards of truth, accuracy, and epistemic rationality but play an important role in supporting epistemic functionality. The notions of epistemic irrationality, epistemic functionality, and epistemic innocence are introduced and the methodological assumptions guiding the discussion in the subsequent chapters are explained.