Intellectual responsibility (also known as epistemic responsibility) is the quality of being adequately reflective about the truth of one's beliefs. People are intellectually responsible if they have tried hard enough to be reflective about the truth of their beliefs, aiming not to miss any information that would cause them to abandon those beliefs as false. Intellectual responsibility is related to

epistemic justification Justification (also called epistemic justification) is a property of beliefs that fulfill certain norms about what a person should believe. Epistemologists often identify justification as a component of knowledge distinguishing it from mere true ...

, or justification of one's beliefs, and to the

ethics of belief The ethics of belief refers to a cluster of related issues that focus on standards of rational belief, intellectual excellence, and conscientious belief-formation. Among the questions addressed in the field are: * Are there standards of some sort ...

. Thomas Ash, following

Roderick Chisholm Roderick Milton Chisholm ( ; November 27, 1916 – January 19, 1999) was an American philosopher known for his work on epistemology, metaphysics, free will, value theory, deontology, deontic logic and the philosophy of perception. Richard and ...

, said "that intellectual responsibility can be understood as a matter of fulfilling one's intellectual duties or requirements. And this is just how justification has been understood, on perhaps the most historically prominent conception of it." Ash considered this to be an "important reason to think that intellectual responsibility is both necessary and sufficient for justification". According to Frederick F. Schmitt, "the conception of justified belief as epistemically responsible belief has been endorsed by a number of philosophers, including Roderick Chisholm (1977),

Hilary Kornblith Hilary Kornblith is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of contemporary epistemology's most prominent proponents of naturalized epistemology. Biography Kornblith received hi ...

(1983), and

Lorraine Code Lorraine Code (born October 19, 1937) is a Canadian philosopher. She is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her principal area of research is feminist epis ...

(1983)."

Robert Audi Robert N. Audi (born November 1941) is an American philosopher whose major work has focused on epistemology, ethics (especially on ethical intuitionism), rationality and the theory of action. He is O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University ...

said that people need "standards to guide an intellectually rigorous search for a mean between excessive credulity elieving too much that is falseand indiscriminate skepticism elieving too little that is true, and he suggested five standards: # Seeking evidence for and counterevidence against propositions to be believed # Seeking

reflective equilibrium Reflective equilibrium is a state of Balance (metaphysics), balance or coherence among a set of beliefs arrived at by a process of deliberative mutual adjustment among general principles and particular judgements. Although he did not use the term ...

, the integration and coherence of beliefs # Identifying and focusing on the grounds for belief # Making interpersonal comparisons in beliefs and grounds for them # Seeking proportionality in degree of conviction and rectifying disproportions __NOTOC__

Responsibility of intellectuals

A separate concept was introduced by the linguist and public intellectual

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

in an essay published as a special supplement by ''

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of ...

'' on 23 February 1967, entitled "

The Responsibility of Intellectuals "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" is an essay by the American academic Noam Chomsky, which was published as a special supplement by ''The New York Review of Books'' on 23 February 1967. Content The article was written during the then-ongoing ...

". Chomsky argued that

intellectuals An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and Human self-reflection, reflection about the nature of reality, especially the nature of society and proposed solutions for its normative problems. Coming from the wor ...

should make themselves responsible for searching for the

truth Truth or verity is the Property (philosophy), property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth, 2005 In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise cor ...

and the exposing of lies.

Responsibility of intellectuals

See also

Notes

Further reading