A THREAD

This gets at something I've been thinking about a lot, regarding moral agency & culpability. When people on the right do some horrible thing, it's often said that it was out of mistaken belief, not malice. For example, in their minds they weren't involved in a coup ... https://twitter.com/EricLevitz/status/1347544936070180867

... they were defending democracy in the face of massive fraud & a stolen election. They were wrong about that, but they sincerely believed it. And "defending democracy against fraud" is, morally speaking, a *good* thing. It's what you'd want people do (if there were fraud)!

Now, obviously if they break laws you can hold them *legally* accountable, but the more interesting question is about *moral* accountability. Are you doing something wrong - for which you should be held morally accountable - if you sincerely believe you're doing something right?

This isn't easy to answer. Again, if democracy were in fact being stolen via massive fraud, protest -- even violent protest -- would be the *right thing to do*. So from within the worldview & fact pattern of those involved, they were doing the right thing.

But it's also unsatisfying to simply say that their errors of belief are exculpatory. After all, most of the people who have done bad things throughout history believed they were doing the right thing. Conscious, deliberate evil is the exception; deluded evil is the norm.

So here's the interesting question: do these people (or people in general) have a *moral obligation to form true beliefs*? In other words, can they be held accountable for being led into error? Can we say, morally, "they should have known better"?

This gets really tricky. On one hand, you're born into a culture, a set of groups & tribes, & it is human nature to believe what your tribes believe, to trust the information sources that your tribes trust. It wasn't your "fault" you were born there; you didn't choose it.

But on the other hand, there are demonstrable things one can do to guard oneself against systematic error. You subject yourself to self-examination or critique by others; you take in info from a wide array of sources; you remain conscious of & resistant to motivated reasoning.

What we can say about today's RWers is, they seem to be participating, eagerly, in their own deception. They do less & less self-examination; they stay inside their epistemic bubble; they consciously exclude or discredit skeptical voices; they *wallow* in self-flattering error.

So it feels like we ought to be able to say, "sure, they were deceived, operating on bad information, but they are at least partially responsible for that. They did nothing to resist it. They were epistemically lazy, on purpose, because they *want* to believe these fantasies."

But that's sticky territory. If we view epistemic best practices as a moral matter, who among us is innocent? We're all in error about something; none of us try as hard as we might, or are as careful as we might be, about what we believe. Where's the line of accountability?

These are extremely urgent questions, since we're moving into a place where fully half the country is trapped in conspiratorial fantasies. They will act on those fantasies. Society will have to figure out how, and to what extent, to hold them morally responsible. </fin>

Ah, this thread is *extremely* relevant to the discussion. https://twitter.com/lilithsaintcrow/status/1347293759155838976