International Phenomenological Society

Entitlement: Epistemic Rights without Epistemic Duties?

Author(s): Fred Dretske
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60, No. 3 (May, 2000), pp. 591-606
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Vol. LX, No. 3, May 2000

Entitlement: Epistemic Rights Without

Epistemic Duties?*
FRED DRETSKE

Duke University

The debate between externalists and internalists in epistemology can be

viewed as a disagreementaboutwhetherthereare epistemicrights (to believe)
without corresponding duties or obligations (to justify what is believed).
Taking an epistemic right to believe P as an authorizationto not only accept
P as true but to use P as a positive reason for accepting other propositions,
the debate is about whetherthere are unjustifiedjustifiers. It is about whether
there are propositionsthat provide for others what nothing need provide for
them-viz., reasons for thinkingthem true.
I take externalists to be people who believe there are such unjustified
justifiers and internaliststo be those who deny it. Externalists hold that we
are entitled to believe some things for which we have no justification. Some
externalists-I happento be one of them-go fartherand say we are not only
entitled to believe things we have no reasons to believe, we often, in fact,
know things we have no reason to believe. Knowledge, the supremeform of
entitlement, requiresno justification. This is not to say that it doesn't sometimes have it.
Talk of "justification"and "reasons"may not be the right way to characterize this disagreementsince partiesto the dispute tend to use these words in
Editor's Note: The following four symposia constitute the proceedings of the first
RutgersEpistemology Conference,held in April of 1999.
Author's Note: Thanks, first, to the participants at the Tuebingen Conference,
Challenges to TraditionalEpistemology, January 14-16, 1999, for helpful criticism and
discussion. I am especially grateful to Sven Bernecker, Thomas Grundman, Frank
Hoffman, Holger Klaerner, Hilary Kornblith,Catrin Misselhorn, and Michael Williams
for comments that led, almost immediately,to substantialrevisions. Thanksto them, this is
not the same paper I read in Tuebingen.
I want also to thank Peter Graham.We disagree about the sources of entitlement,
but Peter's work on this topic (for a Ph.D. dissertationat Stanford)inspired me to try my
hand at it. I learned a lot from Peter.
And, finally, thanks to the many people at the Rutgers conference-especially my
commentator Michael Williams-for helpful criticism. These criticisms forced me to
make several significant changes. This isn't the same paper I read at Rutgers either. The
thing still isn't right,but the tinkeringhas to stop sometime.
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different ways. Some externalists (foundationalists,for example) will insist

that certain beliefs-those about one's own perceptual experiences-are
justified not by more fundamentalbeliefs, but by the very experiences they
are about. It is an object's looking red-a phenomenal state-that justifies
the belief that it looks red. Hence, we have a right to accept some propositions-those describingour own experiences-without there being any other
propositions we accept that supportthem. Other externalists will argue that
merely being connected to the world in a reliable way-whether or not one
knows or is justified in believing one is so connected-is enough to justify
(perhapsweakly justify') whateverbeliefs are the result of that connection. If
these are the ways one uses the word "justification,"then justification is
being construedbroadlyenough to include what I am here calling entitlement.
I am using justification (for believing P or accepting P as true2) more
narrowly, in more nearly the way internalists (and, I think, most people)
understandit-as the reasons,the propositionsone already accepts as true, to
which one can appeal in supportof P.3 Understoodin this narrowway, externalists are people who think the epistemic merit of a belief-one's right to
accept a propositionas true-does not depend on justification.Justificationis
only one of the ways of securing a right to believe. Certainfacts about one's
circumstances,facts one may have no awarenessof and, therefore,facts that
are not one's reasons for thinkingP true, may also give one this right.
As I am using the word, then, one does not earn epistemic entitlementsby
dint of investigative labor or evidential capital. Like various legal or moral
rights (e.g., the right to vote, the right to park your car here) epistemic
entitlements accrue to a person as a result of special circumstancesor status
(citizenship, a physical handicap,etc.) of which the entitlee may be unaware.
One may actually have a justification for accepting what one is entitled to
accept, but the right does not depend on it. Remove the justification and the
entitlementremains.
Ernest Sosa (1991, 245) considers the possibility thatjustificationmay be
only one of the ways for a belief to be (what he calls) apt (or appropriate)for
knowledge. If we adopt Sosa's terminology, we can divide apt beliefs into

See Goldman (1988).

Throughout this paper I regard believing P, thinking that P is true, and accepting P as
true-as much the same thing. Holger Klaernertells me there are problems with this. I
think he is probably right, but I am not convinced these problems affect anything I say
about entitlement. So, with apprehension,I ignore the differences.
Burge (1993, 458) describes an entitlementas an epistemic right or warrantto believe (or
engage in a certain practice) that need not be understood by or even accessible to a
subject. He (p. 459) contrasts this with justification "in the narrow sense" that involves
reasons people have and have access to. Unlike entitlements, justifications must be
"availablein the cognitive repertoireof the subject."This is close to how I will be using
"entitlement"and "justification."
592

FRED DRETSKE

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those which are justified but not entitled, those which are entitled but not
justified, and those which are both.
Apt Beliefs
Justifiedbut
not Entitled

Entitledbut
not justified

Justifiedand Entitled
The propositions we are entitled to accept may be thought of as given. They
are "given"not in the sense of being certainor indubitable(although,if foundationalists are right, some of them are) but because the propositional
endowment is free of justificationalencumbrances.Entitled propositions are
the facts (or, see below, putativefacts) one is given to conduct one's cognitive affairs. The gift-and consequent right of possession-is defeasible or
prima facie.4 One may discover that a propositionone is (or was) entitled to
accept is false or questionable.One might then have a duty to revise or withhold judgment. But until that happens,entitlements,like all rights, confer an
advantage. In the case of epistemic rights it is relief from the burden of
justification.
If one believes in entitlements at all, it is possible-indeed, plausiblethat certain epistemic rights are acquired by a mixture of entitlements and
justification. Think about a person who believes, on the basis of painful past
experience, that fire will burn his hand. Doesn't he believe this reasonably
enough even if he has no answer to Hume, even if he cannot non-circularly
justify thinking the future will (probably) resemble the past? If so, his
justification for believing fire will burn him is based on both justifications
(whateverjustifies him in believing that fire burnedhis hand in the past) and
entitlements (for believing that if it did, it probablywill again)? For similar
reasons, one might suppose, a deductiveproof is a real proof-yielding an apt
belief in its conclusion-even if one cannot prove or justify the rules (e.g.,
modus tollens) one uses in the proof.
Opinions will differ about these matters.Skeptics, clearly, think the only
epistemic rights are those conferredby justification.The only apt beliefs are
justified beliefs. Since (the skeptic argues) we are not justified in accepting
most of what we accept, we have no epistemic right to most of our beliefs.
There are those, on the other hand, who are troubledby skeptical arguments
but who are convinced that skepticism is false. They conclude that we must
See Williams (1977, p. 58-59) for a discussion of how a legitimate notion of The Given
can be separatedfrom questions of certainty and infallibility. The Given can be defeasible. This, indeed, is the kind of Given (i.e., ordinaryperceptualknowledge of our physical surroundings)externalists embrace.
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be entitled to accept some things.5There must be a given-some

propositions we have a right to accept without justification. How else would it be
possible to justify scientific and commonsensebeliefs aboutthe world?
I am no skeptic, but I do not think one can usefully argue for entitlements
from the fact that skepticism is false. Such argumentsmay be valid, but they
give no comfort. They assume exactly what we want to be shown-that there
are things we have a right to accept that we cannot completely, and without
circularity,justify.
So I intend to proceed by asking two questions: (1) are we, in the above
sense, entitled to believe anything? Are we, for instance, entitled to accept
perceptual beliefs at face value? The word of others (Coady 1992, Burge
1993, 1996)? Facts as vouchsafed by memory (Dretske & Yourgrau 1983)?
Facts about how things seem to us? The elementarytruthsof logic and principles of inductive reasoning?(2) If there are things we are entitled to accept
as true, what groundsthis entitlement?Is it somethingabout the process used
in fixing beliefs (e.g., the fact that it is reliable) or is it, instead, facts about
the belief itself (e.g., it is a priori, incorrigible,a necessary presuppositionof
rationalinquiry,or whatever).We cannot be very confidentabout answers to
(1)-about which propositions we are entitled to accept-until we have
answered (2) since if there is nothing we can point to that convincingly
grounds entitlement, there is no reason to think we are entitled to anything.
My strategy,therefore,will be to concentrateon (2). Since perceptionseems
like a plausible source of entitlement, I use perceptual beliefs as my chief
example, but my targetis a general theory of entitlement.
If an entitlement-a right to accept P as true withoutjustification-is an
epistemic right, one would suppose that the only thing that could confer that
right is a relation to the truth(or probabletruth)of P-the fact, for instance,
that there is something about the belief itself, or, perhaps, the process by
which it (or beliefs like it) are acquired-that guarantees, or makes more
probable,the truthof P. Why else call it an "epistemic"right?There may be
a variety of interests served in accepting something as true. One might have
prudentialor religious reasons for accepting P as true (e.g., he will skin me
alive if I don't believe it) that are quite independentof the truthof P. If these
reasons are strong enough, they might give one a right-religious or prudential as the case may-to believe. If one's interestin accepting P as true is to
be regardedas epistemic, though, one would think the primary-indeed, the
only-grounds for that right would be the truth,or probabletruth,of P.
I will later reject this idea-the idea, namely, that it is only a relation to
the truth (or probable truth) that can render a belief (in Sosa's terms) apt.
I here assume (but will not argue; see Fumerton 1988 for most of my reasons) that internalists are also subject to a justificational regress they can only halt by appealing to
somethinglike entitlements.
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There are other sources, othergrounds,for epistemic rights. Nonetheless, it is

reasoning like this that nourishes reliability theories of justification, and I
want to begin by examining motivationsbehind this approachto entitlement.
If, as seems entirely plausible, we have a right to accept as true whatever
we know to be true, and if, as reliability theories of knowledge claim, the
truths we know to be true are those we acquire by some reliable meanswhetheror not we know they are reliable-then reliabilitytheories of knowledge andjustificationyield a nifty accountof entitlement.The source of epistemic entitlements is the belief-generatingprocess. It is the reliability of the
process having the belief that P as its product, not the agent's subjective
grounds for believing P, that secures the required connection to truth and
gives the believer the right to accept P as true withoutjustification.
An extreme form of this view-I will call it Mad Dog Reliabilism-holds
that if one relies on what is, in point of fact, a (sufficiently) reliable process,
one is entitled (hence, has the right) to accept its deliverances despite being
justified in rejecting them. And one is not entitled (justified, maybe, but not
entitled) to accept a propositionas true when using an unreliableprocess even
if justified in thinking it reliable. An epistemic right to accept P as true is
compatible with an epistemic right to reject P as false since these rights can
derivefromdifferentsources.
As an externalist about knowledge, and one who holds that knowledge
gives one the right to believe, I am attractedto Mad Dog Reliabilism. But
only in broad outlines. For I also have powerful internalisticintuitions about
when one has an epistemic right to accept P as true, and these intuitions do
not comport with such crude, uncompromising, reliabilism.6I start to lose
my grip on what an entitlement, a right to believe, is supposed to be if (as
with Mad Dog Reliabilism) it can survive a fully rational and completely
justified rejection-not only by others, but by oneself-of what one is
entitled to accept as true. Entitlementbegins to sound more like an attribute
of what is believed than, as I think it should be, an appraisalof one's right to
believe it.' I can imagine some benighted soul-a brain in a vat will dowhose beliefs are false but whose total evidence-both the evidence he has
and the evidence he can, by assiduous effort, obtain-is the same as mine. If
his beliefs are false and mine true, it nonetheless strikes me that he has the
right to believe whateverI have the right to believe. If I see that the lights are
on and he, having the same experiences as me, merely thinks he can see they
are on, then he has as much right to believe they are on as I do. In light of
the fact that his mistake is inextricableand that he, therefore,has no way of
6

For convincing objections to Mad Dog Reliabilism, both as a theory of knowledge and of
justification,see Alston (1983), Bonjour(1980), Feldman (1985) Foley (1985) and others.
Chisholm (1988) describes analyses of justification that end up equating justified belief
with true belief as "empty." I think the same should be said for analyses of epistemic
rights that equate a right to believe P with true (or reliably produced)Ps.

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finding out his belief is false, the fact that it is false should not count against
his right to believe. He is unlucky, a victim of circumstances,and I am not.
But if I am entitled to my beliefs, he is entitled to his.
If this is a valid intuition, one a theory of entitlement should preserve,
then Mad Dog Reliabilism is false. Entitlementdoes not consist of a reliable
connection to the facts. I (let us hope) have a reliable connection to the world
I have beliefs about and the brainin the vat lacks it. Yet we are both entitled
to our beliefs. The entitlement I enjoy when I have such knowledge must,
therefore,come from somewhereelse.
Let me be clear: I am not claiming, as some internalistsdo, that having a
right to believe requires one to know, or be justified in believing, that one
has that right. No. Talk of rights and entitlements is a complicated and
conceptually sophisticatedbusiness. I see no reason to think one must understand this language, let alone have definite (higher order)beliefs couched in
these terms, to enjoy an epistemic right to believe. I think animals and
children enjoy the same epistemic rights we do. They, too, can see-hence
know-some of what is going on aroundthem. They, too, therefore, enjoy
an epistemic right to believe what they know to be so. It is most implausible, though, to suppose they even believe, let alone arejustified in believing,
that they enjoy such rights. They are entitled, but they do not believe they are
(they don't disbelieve it either). Furthermore,if what I go on to say about
entitlement is correct, internalists as well as externalists have a right to
believe things they are not justified in believing. Since internalists do not
believe they have this right, it will follow (if I am right) that they are entitled
to believe things they (unlike animals and children) positively believe they
are not entitled to believe. They think they do not have such rights. But, if I
am right, they still have them. So my internalism-if that is what it isabout entitlement does not commit me to a KR (or JR) thesis-that the
possession of an epistemic right implies knowledge (or justified belief) that
one has the right. I leave open the possibility of an RR thesis: that a right to
believe implies a right to believe you have a right.
Given these intuitionsabout what entitlementsare and when (if they exist
at all) one has them, entitlementsmust meet the following five conditions:
1. Entitlements to believe P can exist in the complete absence of
reasons or justification(where these are understoodas other beliefs)
for acceptingP as true;

596

2.

Nonetheless, entitlements (like justifications) for believing P gives

one the epistemic right to believe P;

3.

Knowledge that P gives one the right to believe that P

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4.

One can have the right to believe P without knowing or being

justified in believing one has this right.

5.

Entitlementssuperveneon the subjectiveresourcesof the believerfacts the believer eitheris, or can be made, awareof.

Given the characterizationof entitlements in 1 and 2, internalistswill deny

that there are entitlements.8Nothing but justification, they claim, gives one
an epistemic right to believe. Hence, given 3, the fact that knowledge gives
one a right to believe, they would insist that knowledge requiresjustification.
Mad Dog Reliabilists deny 5. They hold that one can be entitled (thus have
the right) to believe P from the mere fact (possibly unknown;possibly even
unknowable)that one's belief that P (or the evidence on which the belief is
based) is a reliable indicatorof P. A propertheory of entitlement,I feel, must
threadits way between these two extremes.
Following Thomas Reid (1970) one attractive way to navigate between
these extremes is to restrict entitlements to those reliable processes one
doesn't have reason to think unreliable.One is entitled to trusttestimony, the
senses, memory, instruments, and so on as long as there is no reason to
think one's sources unreliable.Trustis the default position, a position one is
entitled to occupy barringreasons for thinkingthe trustmisplaced. According
to this view of entitlement,one need not be justified in believing informants
to have the right to believe them. One has that right in virtue of not having
reason to not believe them.9 Everyone and everything is innocent until
proven guilty.
This, I think, is a move in the right direction, but it doesn't move far
enough. As long as it requires reliability ("one is entitled to trust those
reliable processes one has no reasonto thinkunreliable")it is too demanding.
It rules that the brain in the vat does not have the right to believe what its
experiences "tell" it about the world. It still violates 5. But if, to avoid this
objection, one doesn't requirereliability (one is entitled to trust any process
one has no reason for thinking unreliable), it results in a completely
profligate theory of entitlement. It confers a right-an epistemic right no
less-on the most gullible and rash believers-those who, accordingto their
own lights (and what other lights are relevant here?) never have reasons to
mistrusttheir sources.
The rejection of Mad Dog Reliabilism teaches us that something more
than brute reliability is needed to ground entitlement. Yet, what could this
8

To make things symmetric in my classification on the extreme fringes, I will say a Mad
Dog Internalistis one who would also deny 4.
Burge's (1993, p. 467) Acceptance Principle (viz., "A person is entitled to accept as true
something that is presentedas true and that is intelligible to him, unless there are stronger
reasons not to do so") is a version of this strategy.

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be? It cannot be reasons or justification as an internalistunderstandsthis for

that is incompatible with its being an entitlement. But what else, besides
justification, could give one this right? We have to be careful here for
entitlements,being rights to believe, are the basis of actions, actions that are,
presumably,justified if the actor has an epistemic right to the beliefs (and
desires) on which these actions are based. Are externalists really willing to
tolerate someone's hand on the switch who does not have, in the internalist's
sense of justification, a justification for the beliefs that are his reasons for
closing the switch?
We might try (what is sometimes called) a pragmatic justification, a
vindication, of the practices we use to fix beliefs instead of validating the
beliefs themselves (see Alston 1993, Reichenbach 1938, 1949, Salmon
1974). We might-and in the end we may have to-but I'm here interestedin
what can be said aboutour epistemic right to accept particularpropositionsas
true. Showing that some practicalpurpose or need is served by accepting a
certain practice (induction,perception,etc.) does not address the problem of
our epistemic right to accept the individualbeliefs that occur in this practice.
It is our epistemic right to believe P, not the practical needs that may be
serviced by the practice of believing P in that way with which we are now
concerned.
I think we can get a start on this problem by focusing on an unlikely
(given our normativeinterests)featureof perceptualbeliefs-their psychological immediacy and irresistibility.We have no choice about what to believe
when we see (hear, smell, feel, etc.) that things are thus and so. We experience and forthwithbelieve. Between the experience and the belief there isn't
time to weigh evidence. The causal process-from experience of the lights
being on to a judgment that they are on-runs its course before rational
processes can be mobilized. This, indeed, is why we tend to classify the
resultingbelief as a perceptualjudgmentratherthanas an inference,a conjecture, a hypothesis, or an estimate. Is it possible that it is this feature of
perceptual beliefs-their unavoidability-that gives one the right to accept
them? If you have no real choice aboutwhat to believe, and if everythingyou
can reasonably do will only confirm your judgment that P is true, then you
have-don't you?-the right to accept P as true. Ought implies can, and if
you cannot do otherwise, it surely can't be true (as skeptics and internalists
maintain)that you ought to do otherwise.We have a right accept what we are
powerless to reject. This kind of right is called'Oa liberty right (in contrastto
a claim right)-a right that exists when one has no duty or obligation to do
otherwise. This is the kind of right I have to park my car in front of my
house. I have no duty or obligation not to park it there. Hence, if I have that
right, no one else has a legitimate basis for criticizing me when I park it
10

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I take this from Wellman (1995).

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there. This is, admittedly, a weak sort of right, but it is a right nonetheless.
You can have these rights even for things that are not voluntary. I have as
much right to own the propertyI inheritas I do propertyI deliberatelybuy. If
epistemic rights were like this, then, if we ever had them, they would provide
an effective answer to internalists and skeptics who complain we have no
epistemic right to believe (and should, therefore, not believe) without a
justification. If I have a right to believe without justification-an entitlement-then it is not true that I ought to suspend judgment. The right
provides immunity from criticism for believing without justification and
this, perhaps,is all a theory of entitlementcan hope for.
Critics will be quick to object, however, that we are not powerless to
change (or withhold assent to) perceptual beliefs and, even if we are, that
would not show we had a right to believe what we cannot, in the circumstances, help believing. Even if doxastic voluntarism is false (see, e.g.,
Alston 1989, Feldman 1988), even if believing P is never a voluntary act,
there are, generally speaking, always things one could have done that would
have resulted in one's not being compelled (by the evidence) to believe. So
even if, in the circumstances,one cannot help believing P, maybe one has an
obligation not to get in circumstancesin which one can't help it. After all, a
drunkendrivercan rightfullyclaim thathe could not have avoided hitting the
child who walked into the street. Given the speed he was going, and his
reduced reaction time, the accident was unavoidable. Yes, but we still hold
him culpable, and we do so because there are things he could have done,
things he should have done, that would have enabled him to avoid that result
when the critical moment arrived. Maybe perceptual beliefs are like that.
They are outcomes that are unavoidablegiven the priorcognitive make-up of
the believer, but outcomes that epistemically responsible agents should
nonetheless take care to avoid before the critical moment arrives,before they
become unavoidable.
This is a reasonable objection, and I intend answer it. This will serve to
clarify more exactly the thesis I mean to be defending.
I do not choose to believe my wife is sitting on the sofa when I see her
there. Believing she is there when I see her thereis not a voluntaryact. I have
no choice in the matter.I see that she's there and that's the end of it. I can see
her there without believing she is there (I mistake the crumpled shape for a
pile of pillows), but when I see that she is there, my belief that she is there
is caused by the experience I have when I see her there. We describe this
causal process-from perceptualexperience to perceptualbelief-by using a
factive nominal,a that-clause,afterthe perceptualverb:I see that she is there.
This is an involuntary, a non-intentional, outcome not just because I am
caused to believe she is there,but because I am caused to believe it by events
over which I have no directcontrol-my perceptualexperiences.Furthermore,
and more importantly,unlike voluntaryacts (which might also be caused by
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states over which I have no directcontrol-i.e., beliefs and desires), I have no

control over whetherthe cause causes me to act."
Once I see her on the sofa, once the cause (the experience) occurs, I forthwith believe. I believe whatever I happen to want. The cause achieves its
effect, my believing she is there, withoutmy concurrence.
But I do have indirectcontrol over these beliefs. Generallyspeaking,I can
prevent myself from believing what I am, in perceptualsituations, caused to
believe. There are things I can do, before I see her on the sofa, that might
have preventedme from being caused to believe she is there when I see her
there. WhetherI see that she is there (i.e., come to believe she is there) when
I see her there depends, among other things, on what else I believe (or fail to
believe) at the time I see her and these backgroundbeliefs might be different.
There are things I could have done-perhaps, in certain situations, things I
should have done-to change these beliefs. Had I done these things, I might
not have been caused to believe my wife was on the sofa when I saw here
there.
All this is true, but it does not show that epistemically responsible agents
have any choice about what to believe in perceptualcircumstances. It does
not show that if I had behaved in epistemically responsible ways (by checking the lighting, analyzing my morning coffee, looking for signs of deception, etc.), I would have ended up believing anything else. For given that I
saw my wife on the sofa, given that that is what caused me to believe she
was there, thereis nothing I could have done, shortof self-deception, short of
making myself believe I was not seeing her there, that would have prevented
me from believing she was on the sofa when I saw her there. It may be true
that I could have gotten myself so confused-made myself think I was hallucinating, for instance-that when I saw my wife I did not come to believe she
was there.I might have preventedthe experiencefrom having its normal(and
in this case, entirely correct)cognitive upshot. But the fact that I could have
been tricked into not believing she was there when I saw her there does not
mean it was my epistemic duty to do what was necessary to bring about that
mistake. And nothing short of self-deception, nothing short of convincing
myself (if that is possible) that I was not seeing her on the sofa, would have
prevented me from being caused to believe she was there when I saw her
there. At the time I see her I cannot prevent myself from believing she is
In the case of voluntary acts, even if we have no (direct) control over our reasons for
acting (the beliefs and desires that are our reasons for acting), we have control over the
causal effectiveness of these reasons-whether, in fact, they cause us to act. I dialed that
number because I wanted to talk to Ann and I thought that was her number. Yes, but I
can want this and think that without calling her. So what is missing in this explanation of
why I dialed that number? Some kind of volition? Whatever it is (a Frankfurtian2nd
order desire to make 1st order desires effective?), it is something we regard as enough
underour control to make voluntarythe consequentaction. This is quite unlike the kind of
causation at work in perceptualbelief.
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there and, before I see her, there is nothing I could have done (short of self
deception, that is) that would have preventedme from being caused (by my
experience of her) to believe she was there. So nothing I could have done'2
would have changed anything. And if there is nothing an epistemically
responsible agent could have done to avoid believing P, that agent has the
right to believe P. There are absolutely no groundsfor criticizing him. He is
entitledto the belief.
On this conception of entitlement, a brain in a vat (BIV), although not
knowing that his wife is on the sofa (either because he doesn't have a wife,
she isn't on the sofa, or he does not see her there), has exactly the same right
to believe she is there thatI do."3
BIV's belief, like my belief, is not only unavoidable, there is nothing
(accordingto the usual brain-in-vatscenarios)BIV can do, shortof self deception, that will prevent him from believing his wife is there. Should he do
what he takes to be "checking the lighting" or "chemically analyzing his
morning coffee" in an effort to avoid making a perceptualmistake, he will,
like me, turn up only evidence that confirms his original perceptualjudgment. He will, like me, confirm that his wife is on the sofa, that he is not
hallucinatingor dreaming,thatno tricksare being played, and thathe actually
sees her there. Most of these judgments (unlike mine) will be false, of
course, but he will, nonetheless, be broughtto believe them by the same sort
of evidence I use to confirm my (true) beliefs. The global and systematic
delusion that BIV suffers underpreventshim from discovering that he is not
in exactly the same position that I am-seeing his wife on the sofa. So, like
me, there is nothing BIV can do, short of being epistemically irresponsible
(by, for example, contriving to make himself think, contrary to all his
evidence, that he is a brain in a vat) that would have prevented his being
caused to believe his wife is on the sofa by his wife-on-the-sofa-experience.
So a brain in the vat-assuming he is subjectively the same as a person who
sees his wife on the sofa, and assuming there is nothing he can do to uncover
the deception (his mistakes are incorrigible)-has the same right to believe as
do ordinaryperceivers. He has a right to believe his wife is on the sofa or, if
he doesn't have a wife, he has the right to believe he has one and that she is
on the sofa. An incorrigibleBIV is entitled to his false beliefs.

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I could have killed or blinded myself and that would have prevented the perceptual
judgment from occurring, but we are now talking about actions an epistemically responsible agent should have performed and these are not, I assume, actions a skeptic thinks
one is obliged to perform in order to avoid believing what one has no justification for
believing.
If anyone is worried about Putnam style problems (how could BIV have beliefs about
wives and sofas if he never came into causal contact with people and furniture?)assume
that the envattment occurred recently enough to allow BIV to have acquired all the
concepts needed to hold these beliefs.
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If we should suppose, contraryto the usual brain in vat scenarios, that

there are things BIV could do that would reveal to him his unfortunatecondition-that he does not now, and perhapsnever did, see his wife on the sofathe results are quite different. In these conditions, when BIV's condition is
epistemically corrigible,he is not entitled to his belief that his wife is on the
sofa when he (thinks he) sees her if there are things he, as an epistemically
responsible agent, should have done that would have prevented him from
being caused to believe. He is, like me, caused to believe his wife is there
but, unlike me, there are things he could have done, things an epistemically
responsible agent should have done, that would have exposed the deception.
Like a drunkendriver, there are things he should have done, before he was
caused to believe, that would have prevented that experience, when it
occurred, from causing the "accident." In this respect, Corrigible BIV is
culpable in the same way the drunkendriveris culpable. There are things he
could have done, things he should have done, that would have resulted in his
not holding the false belief thathis wife is on the sofa when he "experienced"
her there. Corrigible BIV is, therefore, not entitled to his belief. He, therefore, has no epistemic right to his belief-not unless the right comes from a
justification. If he enjoys the right to believe his wife is there, this right has
to come from elsewhere. It cannot come from the unavoidability of his
believing it.
What is true of Corrigible BIV is true of everyone who makes a
correctablemistake abouteither the conditions he believes to obtain (wife on
sofa) or about the reliability of his access to those conditions (that he sees
her). If my wife is not on the sofa and I mistakenly take myself to be seeing
her there, then I am not entitled to my belief that she is there if there is anything an epistemically cautious agent could have done in the circumstancesto
discover the mistake. PerhapsI should have pinched myself, taken a closer
look, actually tried to touch her, and so on. Had I done these things, my
experienceof her might not have causedme to believe she was there.Whether
I am culpable for the mistake depends on whether I should have done these
things. If I should have done them, I am not entitled to my belief despite its
unavoidabililtyin the presentperceptualcircumstances.
It isn't the fact that there is an epistemic "accident"(i.e., a false belief)
that makes one culpable. Once again, like a drunken driver who, as luck
would have it, doesn't cause an accident, the moral and legal culpability
remains. Even if CorrigibleBIV (or you and me, for that matter)are, as luck
would have it, right about our wives being on the sofa, we are not entitled to
that belief if we are (unlike IncorrigibleBIV) culpably wrong about our way
of telling she is there. Imagine someone believing, truly as it turns out, that
his wife is on the sofa but falsely believing that he can see her there. He
believes she is there because he thinks he can see her there. He is hallucinating a scene that, as chance would have it, actually exists. Is he entitled to this
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belief? As long as we suppose he could have preventedhimself from believing she is there by his experience, he is not entitled to this belief. Whetheror
not he is entitled to the belief depends, once again, on whether there are
things an epistemically responsible agent should have done that would have
preventedhim from being caused to believe by his delusory experience. It is
not the truth of a belief that entitles it. Nor is it simply a matter of its
presentunavoidability.It is the fact that the belief is unavoidablefor an epistemically responsible agent, for someone who has done all he or she should
have done to reach the truth. Perceptual beliefs automatically qualify as
entitled. If the belief she is there is caused by the experience of her being
there, there is nothing an epistemically responsible agent can do, or could
have done, to preventthis belief.
On this account of entitlement,there is no way to demonstrate-certainly
not to the satisfactionof a skeptic-that entitled beliefs are more likely to be
true than false. If we are all being systematically deceived by a Cartesian
demon, then all, or most, of our beliefs are false. Nonetheless, we are still
entitled to hold them. All one can say is that if conditions are favorable, if
the causes of belief are reliable indices (signs) of the conditions we believe to
exist, then an entitled belief that P will, more often than not, be a true belief
that P. But one cannot be expected to show-certainly not to the satisfaction
of a skeptic-that entitlements are only enjoyed in such optimal circumstances.
Nevertheless, though one need not justify entitled beliefs by showing that
they are effective ways of obtaining the truth,one can argue that, given the
critical importance of true beliefs in coping with an often hostile environment, it is hard to see why cognitive mechanisms would have evolved that
gave the agent no choice about what to believe unless those mechanisms
were more reliable-at least more efficient-than otheravailablemethods. At
least they must have been more effective in the conditions that existed at the
time (and in the environment) in which they evolved. There are, one
supposes, evolutionary pressures to install reliable belief-forming mechanisms-perceptual mechanisms, for instance-that actually deliver information about current surroundings.As long as mechanisms can be developed
that establish reliable dependencies between external events and internal
experiences-and thatis what perceptualsystems are presumablysupposedto
do-we can let internal experiences be the primary determinantsof belief
without the involvement of other cognitive factors. We needn't give the
believer a choice about what to believe if, given the exigencies,'4 perceptual

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"Given the exigencies" because, of course, it may be beneficial to install belief-fixing

mechanisms that result in a lot of false positives (e.g., thinkingthere is dangerwhen there
isn't) because of the high price of false negatives (thinkingthere is no dangerwhen there
is). But this sacrifice in informationalvalue (the incoming signals are no longer reliable

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stimuli are themselves reliable enough signs of what the believer needs to
know to produceeffective action.
I say this can be argued, and perhaps it is worth arguing, but, as an
argumentagainst skepticism, it suffers from all the well-known defects (see
Alston 1993) of argumentsfor the reliability of sense perception. Skeptics
will be quick to point out that it begs the importantepistemological questions. And even if we could establish that perceptual systems had to be
reliable in the past (in the circumstances in which they evolved), it does
nothing to show that they are now reliable, and it is present, here-and-now,
reliability that is needed to justify a current belief resulting from such a
system. So even if we buy evolutionary arguments for the reliability of
entitled beliefs, it does nothing to justify currentperceptualbeliefs. At best,
it provides an explanationof why we have no choice aboutperceptualbeliefs
and, therefore,why (on this account of entitlement)we are entitled to them.
Deliberation,choice, reason, and inference were not deemed useful (enough)
options in the circumstancesin which these belief-fixing mechanisms were
being developed. Those who had no choice aboutwhat to believe fared better
(probablybecause they reactedquicker)than those who did. That is why we,
their descendants,are given no choice about perceptualbeliefs. I'm not sure
we ever have a choice aboutwhat to believe, thatwe can ever directly control
what we believe in the way we can directly control the movement of our
limbs, but if there are beliefs over which we exercise this kind of direct
control, we are not entitled to them. If we have a right to them, the right
must come from justification.
I have been arguingfor a very narrowthesis-that we are entitledto accept
veridical perceptualbeliefs (and perceptualbeliefs which, though not veridical, are either incorrigiblyso or such that no epistemically responsible agent
could have avoided them). I am entitled to accept the proposition that my
wife is on the sofa when I am caused to believe she is on the sofa by seeing
her there.1 When I see her there I don't need a justificationfor believing she
is there. My right to believe she is there comes from anothersource. Can the
argumentbe generalized?Are we also entitled to accept what we remember?
What people (instruments?)tell us? I thinkthe thesis can be extended, at least

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signs of external affairs) is only justified if the costs (expenditure of energy) are outweighed by the benefits (safety) of quick (and often unnecessary) action.
There are still technical problems with the thesis as stated this way. The problems relate
to the possibility that the causal process between perceptual experience and perceptual
belief-between seeing her there and believing that she is there-may be causally
deviant (in a sense familiar from action theory). If this causal process is deviant, seeing
her there may not result in seeing that she is there (hence, knowing she is there) despite
producing (in a deviant way) a belief that she is there. I set these technical problems
aside for now. There are probably much more serious problems I have to attend to
before I startworrying about details.
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in certain cases, but I do not have the time to argue for it now. Let me close,
therefore,by pointing out what may alreadybe obvious.
I have about as much choice-exactly none-about what to believe I had
for breakfastthis morning when I remembereating granola as I have about
where my wife is when I see her sitting on the sofa. When the factive
memory (I remember that I had granola) is based on episodic memory (I
remembereating granola)in the way factive sense perception(seeing that she
is on the sofa) is based on episodic perception(seeing her on the sofa) then
the memory beliefs are entitled when memory mechanisms are functioning
properly.A memory belief that one had granolais entitled when one actually
rememberseating it. Recalling our discussion of IncorrigibleBIV, memory
beliefs are entitled even if one is not rememberingas long as one has no way
of discovering this. If, as BertrandRussell asked us to imagine, the world
really was created a few minutes ago, complete with fossils, history books,
and all memory traces, then, according to this theory of entitlement, we are
still entitled to believe what we take ourselves to be remembering.If there
really is no way to uncover the massive deception, then we are all entitled to
believe exactly what we are now entitled to believe. In such a world I won't,
it is true, remembereating granolafor breakfast.And I certainlywon't know
I had granola for breakfast.I will, though, have a perfect right to believe I
did. This, it seems to me, is a conclusion we want a theory of entitlementto
yield.
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