Are You Responsible for What You Believe?
He says he did his own research, and I can't find the line between us.
The question
My uncle won't get the treatment. The doctors are unanimous, and he's read something — he's always reading something — and he sits across the table from me, completely calm, and he says the words that end every argument in my family: "I've done my own research." And I want to scream that his research is three forums and a man on a podcast who sells supplements, but here's what stops me. He believes it. He's not lying to me. He genuinely, sincerely thinks he's right, and some quiet voice in me says: well, you can't blame a man for what he honestly believes. He didn't choose to believe it. It just seems true to him. He's wrong, but he's not guilty.
And then, driving home, the thing turns around on me. Because I do it too. I have beliefs I'd stake a friendship on that I "looked into" the way he looked into his — which is to say, I went and found the people who already agreed with me and I stopped looking the moment it felt settled. I called that research. He calls his that too. And if he's innocent because he sincerely believes it, then so am I, always, about everything — and that can't be right, because I have watched sincere belief do real damage, I have done some of it, and "but I really thought it was true" started to sound less like an alibi and more like a confession. I came in sure he was the fool and I was the careful one. I drove home unable to find the line between us.
The episodes
Each episode builds on the one before, and the finale hands the question back to you sharper, not settled.
8 of 8 transcripts are readable now — audio is coming.
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1
I did my own research
Someone at the table refuses the treatment and says the sentence that ends every family argument — I did my own research. They are not lying; they sincerely believe it. The first episode takes up the doubt that disarms the anger — if sincerity is innocence, nobody is ever to blame for a belief — and notes that this is a conclusion no one actually accepts.
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2
The ship that should not have sailed
W. K. Clifford's shipowner, from "The Ethics of Belief" (1877), talks himself into a sincere conviction that his ship is sound, and the emigrant families aboard her drown. Clifford's claim — that the owner was guilty before the ship ever sailed, and would have been just as guilty had she docked safely — is set out at full strength, together with the rule it commits everyone to.
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3
The genuine option
William James's reply. Some beliefs — a trust, a marriage, a difficult thing done because you first believed you could — must run ahead of the evidence, or you lose what only believing first can reach. His test for the genuine option is set out in full, along with the difficulty that survives it — the person applying the test is judging their own case.
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4
Name the part you chose
No verdict on Clifford against James. Instead the question is turned around — both men argued about the belief, and neither asked about the activity that produced it. The searching, the sources skipped, the moment you decided you had looked enough — that part was conducted step by step, and the episode asks the listener to name the part they chose.
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5
Grant that you can't help it
William Alston's argument that you cannot believe at will, so blaming a belief is a category mistake — the strongest case for innocence there is, granted every inch. Two replies survive it, one moving the duty onto the inquiry you steered, the other holding that you answer for the belief itself. Which of the three is right is left unsettled.
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6
Inquiry is a practice you can do well or badly
John Dewey — from Human Nature and Conduct through the Logic — takes the two smallest words in the argument, belief and research, and deepens both. A belief turns out to be a readiness to act on the world; inquiry turns out to be a demanding public practice that can be done well or badly, of which research alone at a screen is the shrunken remnant.
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7
How much do you owe?
The reasonable question — how much looking is enough before you may believe the thing and get on with your life? — turns out to be the hardest in the series. No figure or checklist exists; the standard, if anything is owed at all, varies with the weight of a person's life; and both ready exits — trust the experts, and do your own research — are closed.
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8
Where were you negligent?
The final episode sets the five positions side by side — Clifford, James, Alston, and the two accounts of where the duty falls — and hands the question back narrower and harder. What is gone is not the verdict but the alibi. Sincerely can no longer do the work of carefully, and you were the only one present when you decided you had looked enough.
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