Should I be held responsible for what I believe? (by Emily Tang)

For a long time, there has been an argument over whether a person should be held responsible for their beliefs. Since beliefs are shaped by unconscious processes, an individual should not be held responsible for their convictions. Certain historical situations illustrate this point, such as the Internal Security Act of 1950 passed during the Second Red Scare; the act punished individuals with suspected communist beliefs, leading citizens to believe they were being unfairly treated due to their political opinions. The subjective nature of belief makes it unreasonable to hold a person fully accountable. In addition, attacking the freedom of belief may violate basic human rights. Instead, the solution is to punish harmful actions resulting from beliefs. The distinction between belief and action is that while the action directly affects something, such as a hurtful act injuring a person, a belief is abstract and will not harm anything by itself. This essay explores the difference between belief and action, why a person should not be judged by belief, and why retribution based on action is the best solution.

Introduction

The Internal Security Act of 1950, sponsored by Senator Pat McCarran, was enacted in response to anti-Communist fears associated with the Cold War era. It allowed the deportation of immigrants accused of promoting Communism and limited free speech for national security reasons (Congress, 1950). The act effectively punished Communist Party members for their beliefs. The introduction of the measure caused an outcry among some U.S. citizens, as recorded by sociologist Charles Mills in his book The Causes of World War Three (1958) (Mills, 1958). These citizens felt that one could suffer negative consequences under the law simply for holding the wrong political opinion.

Two years later, Congress passed the McCarran-Walter Act, creating the foundation for immigration law and imposing new ideological grounds for exclusion. Revising the previous Internal Security Act due to concerns over violations of the First Amendment, it permitted the exclusion or deportation of any individuals engaging in activities subversive to national security (Campi, 2004). The revised provision emphasized the distinction between belief and action: the Internal Security Act punished the simple expression of Communist ideas while the McCarran-Walter Act punished activities, such as organizing pro-Communist meetings. In other words, even the most vehement anti-communist eventually acknowledged the problematic precedent of penalizing thought, the statute was accordingly revised. The capitulation of lawmakers raises a question: when should individuals be held responsible for their belief system, if ever, and why would penalizing belief be different from penalizing action?

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche criticized traditional notions of responsibility and fixed moral laws of right or wrong, stating that the impetus behind an action might not be consciously willed. As a result, he maintained that placing moral responsibility on the agent would be unjustified (Leiter, 2009). This essay accepts Nietzsche’s framework of responsibility and argues that we should not be held uniformly responsible for beliefs, often formed through unconscious processes and sometimes without an active engagement of the will. However, in departure from Nietzsche’s thought, I argue that full accountability should be expected from individuals who operate with cognizance and intent in performing actions. Here, actions are defined separately from belief; beliefs, unlike actions, can theoretically have little bearing on the lives of others beyond the individual unless they lead to action. For the rare exceptions when beliefs cannot be separated from harmful actions, individuals might be reasonably held responsible for their statements of belief.

The Difference Between Belief & Action

Before entering into a discussion of the ethics of punitive measures to discourage belief systems, let us define the terms of belief, action, and responsibility. As Austrian logician Ludwig Wittgenstein postulates, a belief is a mental expression of the world that the individual subjects to some sense of being true (Churchill, 1984), in contrast to actions, which are active engagements with consequences that affect the world. A belief, which may or may not be based on empirical fact, can be of a theological type: for example, the cosmological position held by the 19th-century Latter-Day Saints leader Brigham Young, who stated that men must emulate the example of an anthropomorphic God, taking many wives unto themselves (Faithful Answers, 2022). Young’s thought would not be considered a belief if he and his followers did not accept it as true. One important distinction between belief and action is that it may be experienced by an individual without ever being actualized, as when an individual believes in the importance of exercise for a healthy lifestyle, but does not incorporate it into a daily regime. Meanwhile, as professor Hans Lenk explains, accepting responsibility implies acknowledging one’s actions and facing judgment for the related consequences (Lenk, 2006), whether legally or interpersonally. Consequences can be positive and negative, such as accepting a hug for throwing a surprise party or undergoing jail time for stealing from a shop.

The Subjectivity of Belief

While the impact of actions can at times be measurable, as when totaling damage from a car crash, appraising beliefs is somewhat more challenging. Utilitarian arguments propose that beliefs can be considered morally or intellectually incorrect, and therefore may be subject to punishment; however, both David Hume and Nietzsche undermine a framework of accountability.

In his seminal treatise On Liberty (Mill, 1859), John Stuart Mill suggests that beliefs can and must be evaluated according to a rationalist standard. If beliefs are irrational, they will be eliminated through a process of open debate, ensuring the truth could be reinforced over time. If beliefs are both irrational and harmful, they might contribute to a suboptimal functioning of society, and thus must be criminalized and critiqued. David Hume’s argument for ethical relativism, proposed in The Treatise of Human Nature, advanced that beliefs are based on sentiment, or emotion, rather than reason (Cohon, 2018). Since beliefs informed by objective assessments are difficult to separate from unconscious, subjective, and emotional processes, it is unfair to indiscriminately subject them to Mill’s test of “correctness.” While one may point to the influence of strictly logical processes on forming beliefs, such as the impact of election polls on support for a political candidate, these arguments typically neglect the realities of confirmation bias, such as the partiality of poll casters or wishful interpretations of an isolated graph. Beliefs cannot reliably undergo a test of rationality, since emotions play a pivotal role in forming belief.

Nietzsche further accepts the idea that beliefs are formed through mainly unconscious, uncontrollable processes. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzche suggests that individuals are prey to multiple, battling forces: those of personal experiences as well as ideas unwittingly inherited from social class and environment (Nietzsche, 2009). It might not be warranted to expect full accountability from a person who does not exert direct authority over what he or she believes.

The Conceptual Difficulty of Demanding Certain Beliefs Over Others

The subjective factors influencing personal belief further render it difficult to justify reinforcing or penalizing one value system over another. It is unrealistic to mandate a change of belief if the individual is convicted otherwise. Consider the following thought experiment: if someone sitting at home tries to believe that a giraffe lies in front of them, he or she might only imagine the animal but not succeed in believing in its presence. As Wittgenstein reinforces, beliefs are steeped in some sense of truth. Since the giraffe is not truly in front of the individual, the belief cannot thereby be formed. When an individual is successfully swayed to accept what does not demonstrably appear to be true, as when joining a cult, enduring an abusive relationship, or undergoing political indoctrination, we often say that the victim’s will has been manipulated through their emotions. Thus forcibly demanding a belief system from another is only possible through the inducement of an emotional response, such as fear or a sense of belonging. Otherwise, beliefs can only be genuinely accepted by an individual through an independent act of the will to observe and accept truths, often over a lengthy experiential period.

The Risks of Attacking Freedom of Belief

There are more reasons why presuming an individual guilty on the basis of opinion would be problematic. Restricting freedom of expression and suppressing dissenting views constitutes a blatant violation of human rights. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Ki-moon, 2010) includes the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (International, 2023). In addition, presumption of innocence, whereby the defendant is innocent until proven guilty, demands a standard proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” (Institute, 2020). The standard requires a high level of certainty which would make beliefs unprosecutable; a belief cannot always clearly be tied to a harmful consequence and thus cannot pass scrutiny.

Finally, the process of determining which beliefs are unacceptable is subjective and can result in conformity of opinion. Enforcing beliefs often results in oppression of minority ideas and diminishes pluralism of thought (Perry, 2024). The Galileo affair demonstrates the consequences of suppressing ideas. Spanning from the 16th to 17th century, the concept of heliocentrism, the model of the Sun at the center of the universe, was declared “formally heretical” (Linder, 2002) by the Catholic Church. Galileo was found guilty of heresy by promoting heliocentrism and was kept under house arrest by the Church. Scholars and other astronomers that propagated the heliocentric model were persecuted and punished for their beliefs. The Church supported geocentrism, the theory that Earth is the center of the universe, and it stayed the dominant belief for most of the 17th century (World, 2015). Had the Church not penalized the expression of ideas, the acceptance of a scientifically accurate model of the universe would have been achieved much earlier.

Why Individuals Should Be Held Responsible for Actions

If beliefs cannot and should not be subject to a rationalist test, there nevertheless still needs to be a standard to ensure accountability. The question is: by which means? While isolated beliefs will not cause harm or affect anyone, the actions that result from certain beliefs can. Let us examine the illustrative difference between prejudice and discrimination. Prejudices (Chamberlin, 2004) are preconceived opinions, typically negative, held towards a certain group. Discrimination (Association, 2024) encompasses direct behaviors to the group as a result of these prejudices. The action (discrimination) directly affects outside individuals, while, in contrast, the belief (prejudice) theoretically does not affect others until it becomes concrete in action.

American jurisprudence already implicitly reflects the responsibilization of action over belief. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling Oregon v Smith (Oyez, 1989) called into question the First Amendment free exercise clause (Institute, 1992) when two men were convicted for ingesting an illegal substance, peyote, as part of their religious ceremonies. They appealed to the Supreme Court arguing that the ruling violated their First Amendment freedom of religion. In a 6-3 decision for Oregon, the Court ruled that an individual’s religious beliefs are separate from their actions and their actions were not protected under law. As a result, the original law banning peyote was upheld. The Supreme Court recognized that religious beliefs were protected under the First Amendment, but the men in the case had taken actions that broke a constitutional law, and were therefore convicted for their crimes (Court, 1990).

One application of criminalizing action over belief lies in the trials of individuals with severe mental illnesses. Mentally-ill persons may commit crimes due to misguided beliefs resulting from clinical delusions. In 2004, Andre Thomas was convicted to Death Row for murder. He had a long history of struggling with mental disorders. He had unsuccessfully attempted to seek treatment. During a state of psychosis, he believed God told him to stab his ex-wife and her children (Grissom, 2013; Justice, 2005). He was never granted the rehabilitation and treatment necessary for his condition, which caused uncontrollable, disordered beliefs (SImpson, 2023). Now, could he still have faced retribution? I think so: after all, his beliefs crossed the realm of self-harm and infringed on the security and well-being of others, and might have done so again. Thomas still could have been held responsible for his actions: he might have been placed in a secure mental health facility. Through such a measure, he would still be held accountable for his actions while acknowledging the pathological factors influencing his beliefs.

Exceptions to the Rule: Believing in the Necessity of Harmful Action

There is an exception to the notion that beliefs ought to be considered always separate from action: beliefs should be penalized if there is an overwhelming prior precedent of harm associated with the belief. Israel’s Law of Return, established in 1950, facilitated Jewish immigration into Israel after the Holocaust (Library, 1950). The lawmakers created provisions to prevent individuals with Nazi affiliations from entering Israel. In this case, the restriction of Nazism was permissible due to the close association between National Socialism at that time and harmful actions to Jews, specifically in the wake of WWII.

Conclusion

All in all, individuals should not be held responsible for beliefs, which are mainly created from external influences. Since beliefs are mostly subjective, it would be unjust as well as impractical to prosecute them. There is a better solution: holding individuals accountable for actions, which can be more objectively assessed in terms of measurable consequences.

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