Epistemic failure and blaming others [closed]

Question

It seems we have epistemic responsibilities

To be responsible is to be the proper object of one or more of the normative rather than evaluative attitudes, namely praise, blame, or neutral appraisal. To believe some proposition p is to occurrently, dormantly, or tacitly think that p. Whether or not one is responsible for a belief that p is a matter of whether one can be appropriately appraised for thinking that p."

And it may be that we are not only responsible for praiseworthy beliefs.

So can we blame others for our confusion and failure to know things or are we entirely responsible for both? If the former, in what ways? If forced to choose an ethical framework, how about 'virtue ethics'?

Answer 1

The answer to the first part of your question is so clearly 'yes' that I wonder whether you had some meaning of 'blame' in mind other than its literal meaning of allocating responsibility for an undesirable state of affairs. Let us consider two real examples...

In the UK, the Home Office is the government department responsible for immigration. The immigration rules published by the Home Office are so utterly impenetrable that an entire industry has sprung up to service the resulting need to explain the rules to would be immigrants. I, as an intelligent native speaker of English, found myself utterly perplexed by the Home Office rules when working as a consultant to another government department in connection with overseas recruitment. The rules themselves are not complicated, but they are very badly presented. I think the blame for my perplexity can be fairly laid at the front door of the Home Office.

I use Microsoft Teams for my work. I am reasonably IT literate, yet it took me many hours of effort over several days to resolve a fault that was preventing me from using Teams. The cause of my confusion was a mistake in the online guidance provided by Microsoft. I am happy to allocate responsibility to Microsoft.

Now let us move on to the second part of your questions, which is much less clear-cut. There are many factors that need to be taken into account when determining the extent to which you or one or more other parties are responsible for your ignorance and confusion. The main factors are:

The complexity of the subject matter. You can hardly blame string theorists if you fail to understand string theory.

The nature and degree of the effort you have invested in attaining the facts. You would have only yourself to blame if you got wet because you hadn't bothered to check the weather forecast.

Whether you have relied upon a source that is, or purports to be, an authority on the matter. You might blame the author if you were still utterly confused by string theory after reading their book entitled 'String Theory Made Easy'.

Whether a source your have trusted was dishonest or incompetent or where themselves misinformed in turn by another party. You would feel entitled to blame the railway company if they told you your train was running on time when in fact it was three hours late.

Whether the subject matter is covered by legislation which places a particular onus on one or more organisations to ensure that you are well informed. For example, a medical doctor in the UK has a duty of candour to patients, so your doctor would be unquestionably to blame if they misinformed you.

I think you will find the the factors I have listed above will help you decide who is to blame in the majority of cases. However, there will always be cases which cannot be readily decided on the basis of a handful of principles, so happily they will furnish endless scope for further discussion.

Answer 2

The question is less interesting than it seems, which it masks in over generality

network epistemology models start with a collection of agents on a network, who choose from some set of options. One option is preferable to the rest, but to find out which this is, the agents must actually try them and see what results. These could represent choices of action-guiding theories (like “caterpillars are safe” and “caterpillars are poisonous” or else “vaccines are safe” and “vaccines cause autism”). They could alternatively represent research approaches that yield different levels of scientific success.

Agents have beliefs about which option is preferable, and change these beliefs in light of the evidence they gather from their actions. In addition, they also update on evidence gathered by neighbors in the network, typically... how can we shape good epistemic networks

One of the most interesting recent uses of the network epistemology framework involves investigating the role of pernicious influencers, especially from industry, on epistemic communities. Holman and Bruner (2015) look at a network model where one agent shares only fraudulent evidence meant to support an inferior theory. As they show, this agent can keep a network from reaching successful consensus by muddying the water with misleading data... papers [also] give insight into how strategies that do not involve fraud can shape scientific research and mislead the public.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-social

So group beliefs can be brought about by faulty nodes of network we can call "bad", whether or not individuals in groups can shift doxastic responsibility for their false beliefs onto their malfunctioning community and the normative responsibility - blameworthy etc. - of other individuals within it.

More generally, some philosophers thinks

ignorance is culpable when it results from the violation of epistemic obligations regarding which the agent could reasonably have been expected to comply given her cognitive capacities and the opportunities provided by her social context, and when such violation is due to the agent’s epistemic vices such as “overconfidence, arrogance, dismissiveness, laziness, dogmatism, incuriosity, self-indulgence, contempt, and so on” (2008: 609).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-responsibility-epistemic/#IgnoEpisVice

so if we exhibit these "epistemic vices" we are culpable for our own ignorance, if not others' (which seems unexplored)

May also be worth considering how, while many people would say we have a duty to share relevant knowledge at times (intellectual property rights for vaccines), some things are legitimately esoteric and not meant culturally for everyone. So you'd have to state what sort of epistemic failure is meant. Everyone has a right to education vs cultural appropriation (etc.).

In conclusion,

It seems wrong to say never blame anyone but yourself, and there is nothing obviously suspect about doing so, but in some instances it may just be you.

Answer 3

Very short answer. Different between man and animal/human, that man can act by will - art, and animals action base on reactions - because their nervous system works on reflexes formed from the outside, or "called" from outside.

Nobody called Ralph on Pattie birthday. Does Ralph need a permission to greet Pattie? or told with Pattie about her birthday? Have Ralph self will or he has only culture reflex the signifier on the birthday when "nobody" calls? No-body - no body - body it is a thing. Does Ralph need a command or letting from the thing to act? Whose this body? Others have no bodies and unable to call Ralph, or it is Ralph body doesn't let him to go, Ralph doesn't control his body, Ralph haven't mind? Who is Ralph, does Ralph exist? If Ralph blame on "nobody" whose this fault? And who called up a blaming Ralph's reflex? is it faulty nodes in a network of the agents system? what? are you matrix?

"Dear Ralph! You don't need blame on bodies of others, we ll fix faulty nodes soon, just have patience. And don't forget to subscribe on our new product. Your brain agency."

Answer 4

From my experience, any question that begins

Can we blame others

Usually has an answer of no.