Moral Encroachment and Moral Reasons For and Against Withheld Belief

Recent literature on moral encroachment begins with “high stakes” cases where someone draws an undermining inference about a person using statistical evidence. The cases are meant to show that although the evidence initially seems to adequately support the undermining belief, the belief is not justified. Forming an undermining belief about a person can have negative consequences if that belief turns out to be false, so more evidence is needed to justify the belief. Confronted with high stakes cases, a person ought to withhold belief and search for extra evidence to avoid the high risk possibility of forming a false belief. This approach views the effect of non-evidential or moral considerations as constituting reasons for withheld belief. However, I argue that if moral considerations can constitute reasons for withheld belief, they can also constitute reasons against withheld belief. In these cases, the moral risk of missing out on a true belief via withholding can affect the level of evidence necessary for epistemic justification. But accepting this claim can lead to a problem for moral encroachment: cases where forming a false belief is morally risky, so one ought to withhold belief, but where withholding is also morally risky, so one shouldn’t withhold. It’s not clear which risk we should weigh more heavily in the process of forming a belief, which brings into question the claim that moral considerations can affect the threshold of evidence necessary for a belief to be justified.