Responsibility for Bad Beliefs and Moral Relativism

In this article, I argue in defense of responsibility for bad beliefs from the perspective of ethics of belief and cognitive science, providing a classification of bad beliefs into three types. I also present arguments in support of the regulative value of truth. Metaethical moral relativism alters the understanding of the basic tenets of the ethics of beliefs and also undermines the idea of truth as a fundamental epistemic good. There are potential epistemic pitfalls associated with moral relativism, including its use to support bad beliefs, where truth becomes relative to the benefit of a group or those in power, thus undermining the very concept of truth. Although Clifford’s classic principle is overly demanding, moral responsibility should be required for the way beliefs are acquired, since epistemically ill-formed beliefs tend to become morally and epistemically bad under unfavorable social conditions.