If you're so rational, why don't you have any friends? : a theory of doxastic wrongdoing and interpersonal rationality

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with two key ideas. The first is doxastic wrongdoing, the idea that doxastic attitude could, in and of itself, constitute a wrong. The second is interpersonal rationality. A distinct sense of rationality applicable to both actions and beliefs that is to be contrasted against epistemic rationality. In exploring and elucidating these notions, I hope to make progress on issues facing contemporary social epistemologists. The thesis is split into two parts. In part one, we deal with doxastic wronging. In section 2, I motivate the idea that there are such things as doxastic wrongs. In section 3, I discuss how it is that belief could wrong by drawing on work done in Strawsonian Epistemology. In section 4, I then consider how the existence of doxastic wrongs impacts how we ought to reason. I suggest that doxastic wrongs impact what you ought to believe because they impact what is interpersonally rational.

The notion of interpersonal rationality on which I rely will be the focus of part two. In section 5, I clarify the notion further and consider what it is that the doxastic wrong theorist commits to in appealing to it. Sections 6 and 7 then consider objections to interpersonal rationality. In section 6, we consider an argument derived from the idea that interpersonal reasons, which bear on what is interpersonally rational, are reasons of the wrong kind. In section 7, we consider an argument which aims to show that interpersonal reasoning cannot occur as I have described. Having defended the notion, I then consider the work it can do in other areas of social epistemology, specifically for the doxastic partialist. In section 8, we will consider arguments for doxastic partiality. I argue that the partialist has much to gain from endorsing both the existence of doxastic wrongs and interpersonal rationality.