Deliberation, Rational Agency, and Responsibility for Belief

Abstract

In this paper, I examine Richard Moran’s claim that a believer implicitly takes her beliefs to be a product of her rational agency. This commitment, on Moran’s view, is a direct consequence of the believer’s assumption that her acts of deliberation determine her beliefs. I will show that having such an implicit assumption would not just require a believer to be responsive to questions about the justifiability of her beliefs. She would also be obliged to actively consider the import of any new information that might challenge one of her beliefs, even if she does not know which belief is impugned. I argue that such a requirement is implausibly demanding, and that we should reconsider whether holding a belief really implies as strong a set of commitments as Moran suggests it does.