We have the pleasure to invite you to another research seminar. Giulio Fornaroli is going to give a talk: "Doxastic Wrongs, Freedom of the Mind, and the Right to Wrong Others (in Our Mind)”. The seminar will take place on Thursday 23rd of November at 5:30 p.m. in the room 25 on Grodzka Street and via MS Teams.

Abstract

Suppose you are at a posh event where there is only one Black guest. Without even thinking too much about it, you are about to hand him your coat before realizing the person you mistook for an attendant is actually a fellow invitee. Even if you do not actually hand him the coat, you are bound to feel ashamed. But why? What's wrong with your merely believing - falsely - that the Black invitee was actually a waiter? 

Some philosophers have argued that, in situations such as this, you are not just reasoning in a problematic way, but you are responsible for a particular kind of directed wronging, i.e., doxastic wronging (DW). 

In this presentation, I plan to do three things. I am going to show first that the idea of doxastic wronging, however superfically similar to an account of wronging I have myself endorsed, does not stand up to criticism. Secondly, I am going to argue that there is an idea in the vicinity of DW which is actually more plausible, which I am going to call wronging-in-thought. But, thirdly, I am arguing that we must reconcile wronging-in-thought with the very plausible principle according to which thought needs to be protected not only from coercion but also from excessive prying and judgementalism. This leads to the conclusion that we might indeed sometimes wrong others in our thought but that we generally have a right to do so.

Link to the MS Teams meeting