Radical Permissivism and Choosing for Others

ABSTRACT Radical Permissivism holds that, in almost all evidential situations, a wide range of credences towards a proposition can be equally rational. This view allows for the rational permissibility of beliefs that intuitively seem highly irrational—such as Clifford's shipowner's risky belief that his ship is seaworthy, or a conspiracy theorist's outlandish beliefs about childhood vaccination. These beliefs, in turn, can justify actions with serious harmful consequences for others. Granted such permissivism, can we explain why an agent should not act on their seemingly irrational belief when their actions affect others? Recently, Pettigrew (2022) proposed a strategy to address this issue, arguing that when an action affects others, a decision‐maker should consider not only their own but also others' epistemic risk attitudes. After explicating this strategy, I level two general arguments against it: that it (i) fails to provide the required safeguards against actions with serious moral consequences, and (ii) does not extend to non‐human animals who lack epistemic risk attitudes. I conclude that a more moderate epistemology is needed to account for the connection between epistemic rationality and morality.