01/16/2026
Join us on January 23 at 4:15 pm for a talk by Daniel Muñoz on "Epistemic Supererogation and the Right to Believe.”
Abstract: It's a sad fact that other people are so often wrong and unreasonable. Even worse, they think the same of us! How can we live together on civil terms when we can't rationally endorse each other's views? I think the answer lies in a phrase often thrown around but rarely pinned down: "the right to believe." Usually, the right to believe is thought of as a claim against brainwashing or browbeating, but I argue that there is a quite literal sense in which our rights let us justify our beliefs to others about matters of religion, morality, and aesthetics. This "epistemic prerogative," as I call it, is not a reason to believe anything in particular, just as the right to free speech is not a reason to say anything in particular. But
the prerogative allows us to tolerate, in a coherent and principled way, beliefs that we know to be subpar. Rather than seeing our beliefs as obligatory for others to share in, we should tend to see these beliefs as "supererogatory"—the philosopher's term for "beyond the call of duty."
