In Defense of Robust Moral Encroachment

I argue for robust, as opposed to cautious, moral encroachment. Cautious moral encroachment holds that non-evidential moral considerations interact with the threshold for an attitude's positive epistemic status asymmetrically: raising, but not lowering, the threshold. Robust moral encroachment, on the other hand, holds that the effect of moral considerations is symmetric: moral stakes can both raise and lower the threshold for an attitude's positive epistemic status. In other words: when the moral benefits of being right about p are greater than the moral costs of being wrong about p, the moral stakes can exert downward pressure on the evidential threshold for justified belief. To make this case, I argue that given the moral roles played by outright belief, we have reason to go in for robust, as opposed to cautious, moral encroachment. To illuminate the importance of accepting robust moral encroachment, I consider some cases in which there are high moral stakes of failing to take an attitude towards a true proposition. I argue that to determine the relative moral stakes, we ought to take into account both the magnitude and distribution of harm that stands to accrue.