On the Ethics of Belief

David Hunter (Ryerson University)

I consider a few ethical aspects of believing. I argue that belief properties are not goodness-fixing properties. That is, no case of believing something is a good or better case of believing than any other. I suggest that it can nonetheless be to a person’s credit or discredit that she believes something. That is, a person’s believing something can be evidence that she is more or less good in a certain respect. A good person believes what she ought to believe, unless she has a good excuse, in which case it is not to her discredit that she does not believe it. And what a person ought to believe depends on what she ought to know, and this has little to do with what else she believes or with the evidence she has.