Can Deceived Subjects be Rational?

Are you rational in believing this animal is a zebra when it’s actually a cleverly disguised mule?

Suppose there is a conflict between two people who have different beliefs on the same matter. One way we can adjudicate this conflict is to ask how rational each person is in believing what they believe. And when judging how rational one is believing a given belief, typically, we look into the reasons that support her belief. Intuitively, it is plausible that something that is true (or, in philosophical jargon, veridical) has more reason-giving force than something that is not true (or non-veridical). Similarly, it seems plausible that facts have more reason-giving force than mere appearances.

So far so good. But things start to get tricky when we bring deception into the picture. How are we supposed to evaluate the rationality of someone who is under deception? What if she doesn't even have access to the facts because she is being deceived? Can a deceived subject be equally rational as her undeceived counterpart, given that they share the same mental properties and processes? These are some of the questions I address in a project I’m working on. I think these questions are difficult to answer partly because there are two conflicting intuitions at play, and giving up either of these would require us to bite some tough bullets.

To illuminate why these questions are tricky to answer, imagine a pair of subjects who share all internal mental properties. Call these subjects Goodsmith and Badsmith, detectives scouring a forest in search of a murderer. Since they are internal duplicates, any difference between them lies only in the facts that are external to their mental states. Goodsmith is under favorable epistemic circumstances, whereas Badsmith is not; she is under total and systematic deception by an evil demon. This deception is due to no fault of her own, and there is no way for her to escape from or be aware of this deception.

Goodsmith perceives that someone is hiding behind a tree and forms the belief that the murderer is hiding behind the tree. Suppose this appearance is veridical and someone actually hid behind the tree. Her belief is then supported by the reason given by the external fact that someone is hiding behind the tree. Absent defeaters, she is rational in believing so. Suppose Badsmith has a perceptual experience that is indistinguishable from Goodsmith’s and comes to form the same belief. However, the appearance in this case is non-veridical, for it is an elaborate deception. No one actually hid behind the tree. Therefore, there is no external fact that supports her belief.

Many, if not most, would find it counterintuitive to say Badsmith is irrational in believing that the murderer is hiding behind the tree. If you’re like me, you will have the stronger intuition that Badsmith is equally rational as Goodsmith. Given the unfortunate epistemic circumstances, it seems that Badsmith is being as rational as anyone in her shoes could ever be! Her belief seems supported by her mental states, including the appearance that someone is hiding behind the tree. Rationality is normative; calling someone irrational amounts to a serious form of criticism. And it seems that Badsmith is not subject to any criticism, in this case.

The issue with explaining the intuition that Badsmith is rational is that this appearance is non-veridical. The proposition she believes is false. That Badsmith’s reasons are given by appearances, not facts, makes us hesitate to say that her reasons support her belief equally as facts do in Goodsmith’s case. Furthermore, according to the standard view that reasons are factive, contents of the subject’s non-veridical mental states do not count as her reason. On this view, there is no reason that supports Badsmith’s belief. How, then, are we to account for Badsmith’s rationality?

Recent works in epistemology have tried to accommodate this intuition by arguing that Badsmith’s belief may be supported by a reason different from Goodsmith’s. Typically, proponents of the reasons-responsiveness view of rationality claim that the reason supporting Badsmith’s belief is something other than the straightforward external fact that someone is hiding behind the tree.

I think the solutions provided by existing accounts are unsatisfactory. Fine details about how these accounts work (or don’t work) aside, I believe they shed a light on how we are to understand rationality. Rationality, I believe, is best understood as something the subject exercises, not something that occurs merely by virtue of the reasons being configured in ways that meet certain conditions. Thinking about rationality in the latter way puts the subject’s rationality at the mercy of factors external to the subject, which she often has no epistemic access to. This way of thinking is what leads us to the counterintuitive verdict that Badsmith is irrational. I think understanding rationality as a kind of competence can allow us to better capture what rational subjects have in common, whether they are deceived or not. Even in the bad case where the subject is bound to form false beliefs, she can be rational as long as she properly manifests her rational competence. Although, under unfortunate epistemic circumstances, even the best manifestation of one’s competence can result in false beliefs.

This problem particularly interests me because, for one, it touches upon some very fundamental issues about reasons and rationality. Finding a way to plausibly account for Badsmith’s rationality and reasons can shed light on topics such as the relationship between being rational and having reasons, the normativity of rationality, the requirements of rationality, rational delay, and so on. For another, I think it has the potential to help us better understand rationality in general. In the real world, we don’t worry about an evil demon severing the connection between our beliefs, experiences, and reality. But we can easily think of cases where we are deceived by other people that we interact with. However, a related issue that is becoming more and more salient is deceptions by people we do not directly come into contact with, such as disinformation being circulated via media, and deceptions by non-persons, such as AI generated images. I believe thinking about the rationality of deceived subjects can provide us a framework to think about the rationality, or the lack of, of subjects in such real-life circumstances as well. Because evil demons are not the only things that can deceive us.