Publishing without (some) belief

Alexandra Plakias has recently argued that philosophers may permissibly publish claims they do not believe. This raises the question: when is it permissible to publish without belief? Is it always? I provide three counterexamples to the idea that it is always permissible to publish without belief. I argue that it is only permissible to publish a certain kind of claim when one does not believe it. I call these advocacy role claims. Another kind of claim is impermissible to publish without belief: what I call evidential role claims. These types are distinguished by their function. Advocacy role claims aim to promote productive debate and disagreement. Evidential role claims aim to add to the common stock of evidence. The resulting theory incorporating the distinction explains the differences between Plakias’ cases and mine. It is applicable to publishing in a wide variety of fields beyond philosophy. Philosophers have recently been interested in the appropriate attitude to have toward a controversial philosophical theory. There are a variety of reasons to doubt that belief is appropriate, as the high epistemic standards required for justified belief would seem to exclude too many philosophical theories as viable options. Relatedly, there are worries about assertions of philosophical claims, since assertion is also thought to be governed by substantive epistemic norms. In light of this, a variety of alternative attitudes have been proposed in order to characterize philosophical commitment and assertion.1 Alexandra Plakias (2019) has helpfully expanded this discussion to the topic of philosophical publication. Plakias argues that it is permissible for philosophers to write and publish works (e.g., journal articles or books) that include claims they do not believe, a practice she calls publishing without belief (PWB).2 Her thesis is carefully limited to philosophy, as opposed to 1For the reasons to worry about the appropriateness of belief, see Frances (2010, 2013), Goldberg (2013). For proposed alternative attitudes, see Barnett (2019), Carter (2018), Goldberg (2015), McKaughan (2007), Palmira (2019), and Fleisher (2018). For accounts of philosophical assertion, see Goldberg (2015) and Fleisher (2019). 2I will talk in terms of ‘claims’ in order to remain neutral about which types of speech acts publishing involves. On this usage, claims are token speech acts: statements uttered in writing.