The duty of inquiry or why Othello was a fool

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The duty of inquiry, or why Othello was a fool* ABSTRACT: This paper argues that Othello helps us adjudicate in an important

epistemological debate, by showing that we have a distinctively epistemic duty of

inquiry. Epistemologists who repudiate this duty cannot fully account for Othello’s

epistemic situation, and thus have an impoverished ethics of belief.

Appeals to Shakespeare in analytic philosophy tend to suffer from two drawbacks. First, examples from

his plays are inevitably used for cosmetic purposes rather than for generating substantive arguments.

Second, no attention is paid to the relevant text1. The unhappy result is that such appeals are

unsatisfying to both the more literarily minded and the hard-‐‑nosed philosopher, striking the former as

glib and the latter as of marginal philosophical value. In this paper I show that taking Shakespeare

seriously can help us do real philosophical work. I focus on Othello as someone particularly

overworked in the cosmetic line (e.g., Russell 1971, Williams 1973).

Shortly before Othello embarks on his self-‐‑eulogy and suicide, he addresses himself as ‘O fool!

fool! fool!’ (5.2.322) 2. I argue that this exclamation dramatizes a central feature of his epistemic situation,

which can adjudicate in an important epistemological debate concerning our ethics of belief.

Our ethics of belief specifies the epistemically good ways of forming and revising our beliefs.

The godfather of this ethics, W. K. Clifford (1877), thought that its defining norm was the evidence-‐‑

norm: you should proportion your beliefs to your evidence. But he also thought that complying with

this norm sometimes involves the epistemic duty of inquiry -‐‑ the duty to seek more evidence than one

has. Clifford’s descendants -‐‑ ‘evidentialists’ – keep the evidence-‐‑norm, but repudiate the duty of

inquiry. According to them, if we have such a duty at all, it is always prudential or moral, never

epistemic (e.g., Conee and Feldman 2004; Dougherty 2010).

I argue here that Othello shows us that Clifford was right that we have an epistemic duty of

inquiry. An ethics of belief which doesn’t feature this duty fails to accommodate important forms of

epistemic appraisal. I first outline the Othello argument (§ 1) and then defend its three premises by

appeal to textual evidence (§§ 2-‐‑5). I conclude by drawing out the more constructive implications of the

argument: Othello gives us the beginnings of a positive account of when we have a duty of inquiry (§ 6).

* Acknowledgements1 Stanley Cavell (2003) is a notable exception in both these respects.2 All references to the play are to Shakespeare (2005).

C. Bourne and E. Bourne (Eds.) (In press) The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy,

(Routledge)

If you want to read the longer version, email me

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1. The Othello argument

Let me first distinguish the two sides of the debate for ease of reference:

Evidentialism: The epistemic status of a belief that p at a time is solely fixed by the belief’s fit with the believer’s evidence concerning p at that time.

Clifford-‐‑evidentialism3: The epistemic status of a belief that p at a time is fixed by both

(1) the belief’s fit with the believer’s evidence at that time, and

(2) whether the believer has complied with her duty of inquiry.

The Othello argument aims at showing that Clifford-‐‑evidentialism gives us a better ethics of belief in

virtue of adding condition (2).

The argument, in outline, is this:

(P1) The following two claims are true:

JUSTIFIED: Othello’s belief that Desdemona is unfaithful is justified by the evidentialist’s lights (§ 2).

BLAME: Othello’s ‘fool’, nonetheless, epistemically censures the belief for the way it was formed (§ 3).

(P2) The evidentialist can’t account for BLAME (§ 4).

(P3) The Clifford-‐‑evidentialist can account for both JUSTIFIED and BLAME (§ 5).

(C) So, Clifford-‐‑evidentialism provides a better ethics of belief.

In what follows, I take it as read that Othello was right to censure himself in the way envisaged by

BLAME. The play is a typically Aristotelian tragedy in which a virtuous person commits an error of

judgement due to giving in to passion. If there were nothing epistemically wrong with Othello’s belief,

then no error of judgement would be committed4. So, if we think that his fate was tragic then we think

that his epistemic self-‐‑censure was correct. Hence, we need the richer ethics of belief that Clifford-‐‑

evidentialism gives us.

2. (P1): JUSTIFIED

In this section I argue for the first half of (P1): Othello’s belief that Desdemona is unfaithful (henceforth

‘BDU’) is justified by the evidentialist’s lights.

3 This label is meant as a convenience, rather than a faithful reflection of Clifford’s view. As far as I am aware, the only modern Clifford-‐‑evidentialist is Baehr (2011). The argument I offer here is, like his, a friendly amendment to evidentialism. But unlike Baehr, I don’t think that the virtue-‐‑machinery can fix evidentialism (see fn. 6).

4 Clearly, an error of judgement is a normatively richer notion than a false belief. The evidentialist can point out that Othello’s belief is false. But this isn’t a blameworthy epistemic defect, so it would not explain Othello’s distinctly normative censure.

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2.1 The evidence for BDU

When Iago first insinuates to Othello his ‘doubts’ about Desdemona’s fidelity, Othello himself raises the

question of evidence:

Be sure thou prove my love a whore –

Be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof (3.3.359-‐‑60).

And he presses the request throughout the scene:

Make me to see’t, or at least so prove it

That the probation bear no hinge nor loop

To hang a doubt on (3.3.364-‐‑366; see also 3.3.386 and 3.3.410)

Iago obliges Othello with an elaborate seven-‐‑stage ‘proof’:

(1) Iago instructs Othello (a foreigner in Venice) in the deceptive and promiscuous ways of Venetian women, in between deftly reminding Othello that Desdemona has already deceived her father (3.3.203-‐‑5).

(2) Iago plays on Othello’s misgivings that he is an ‘unnatural’ match for Desdemona in virtue of his race, cultural background, and age, in contrast to Cassio who is of her culture, her age, and handsome to boot (3.3.229-‐‑39).

(3) After having engineered Cassio’s dismissal from his lieutenantship, Iago urges Othello to delay Cassio’s reemployment in order to see how insistently Desdemona entreats for it (3.3.251-‐‑3). She does so avidly (3.4.86-‐‑96), tragically explaining in Othello’s hearing that she is doing so, ‘for the love I bear to Cassio’ (4.1.224).

(4) Iago relates in great and steamy detail how Cassio putatively sleep-‐‑talked about his affair with Desdemona (3.3.418-‐‑24).

(5) Iago tells Othello that Cassio has explicitly confessed to intimacy with Desdemona (4.1.30-‐‑34).

(6) Iago has Othello witness a scene in which Cassio is deriding his affair with Bianca, a courtesan, while Othello thinks (curtesy of Iago) that he is referring to Desdemona (4.1.108-‐‑154).

(7) Finally, of course, there is the handkerchief. It is Othello’s first gift to Desdemona and he has asked her always to carry it about her (3.3.294). Emilia finds it and gives it to Iago who plants it in Cassio’s lodgings. It thereafter features as evidence in three ways:

(a) Iago tells Othello he has seen Cassio wipe his beard with it (3.3.437-‐‑9).

(b) Othello sees it in Bianca’s hands, and hears her say that it clearly belonged to another of Cassio’s lovers (4.1.146-‐‑8). As Iago helpfully points out to Othello, this means that Desdemona has given the precious handkerchief to Cassio, and ‘he hath given it his whore’ (4.1.169-‐‑70).

(c) When Othello asks Desdemona whether she has lost it, she repeatedly lies to him (3.4.81, 83, 84) and refuses his insistent requests to produce it. Her refusals are accompanied by urgent pleas for Cassio’s re-‐‑employment (3.4.83-‐‑86).

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These are the pieces of evidence on which Othello’s belief is based, as he makes poignantly clear before

he literally collapses with jealousy and grief:

Handkerchief – confessions – handkerchief… It is not words that shake

me thus… Confess-‐‑handkerchief! O Devil!

Othello falls in a trance (4.1.36-‐‑42).

On coming to, he witnesses the conversation between Cassio and Iago (6), sees the handkerchief in

Bianca’s hands (7b), and BDU is irrevocably cemented.

2.2 BDU is justified by the evidentialist’s lights

I think we can all intuitively appreciate the overwhelming cumulative force of these pieces of evidence,

which gets surprisingly often missed. I now argue that BDU is also justified by the evidentialist’s lights.

What are these lights? Evidentialism is wedded to the following notion of epistemic

justification:

Doxastic attitude D toward proposition p is epistemically justified for S at t if and only if having D toward p fits the evidence S has at t (Conee and Feldman 2004: 83).

This is what has come to be known in the literature as ‘synchronic justification’: justification is solely a

matter of the evidence available to the believer at the time of evaluation. All that is meant by ‘evidence’

are considerations which speak in favour of the truth of p. Available evidence consists of these

considerations internalised: ‘S has [e] available as evidence at t iff S is currently thinking of [e]’ (ibid.

232).

I think BDU is pretty clearly synchronically justified. To begin with, notice that the evidence for

BDU is of two kinds: Iago’s allegations against Venetian women (1), his tales about Cassio’s dream (4),

confession (5), and seeing the handkerchief on Cassio (7a) are pieces of testimony. The rest of the

evidence is of the ‘ocular-‐‑proof’ kind. Although Iago has largely engineered the latter, Othello still

witnesses Desdemona’s entreaties for Cassio’s re-‐‑employment (3), Cassio’s derision of his affair (6), the

handkerchief on Bianca (7b), and Desdemona’s repeated lies that she still has it (7c).

Clearly, not all of the above pieces of evidence weigh equally. The first three, by themselves, are

insufficient to justify BDU. But they do reinforce the main body of evidence -‐‑ the handkerchief (7),

Cassio’s putative derision of Desdemona (6), and his supposed confession (5). The handkerchief is

obviously the weightiest piece of evidence. Regarding the others, they would be good evidence

provided they are undefeated5 by evidence that the attestant is untrustworthy.

This is precisely Othello’s case. He has no evidence against Iago’s trustworthiness. Iago is

continuously addressed as ‘good’ and ‘honest’ by everyone in the play (2.1.96, 97; 2.3.21, 39; 4.2.150).

5 A defeater is a consideration which undermines the justification of the belief that p, by being either evidence against p itself (a ‘rebutting defeater’, Pollock 1987: 485) or evidence that my evidence for p is not a reliable indication of p’s truth (an ‘undercutting defeater’, ibid.).

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Moreover, Othello and Iago have known each other for a long time and have fought side by side in

many battles (1.1.26-‐‑29). Iago’s testimony, then, is an undefeated source of justification for BDU.

What about other potential defeaters? The only candidates are:

• Othello’s previous trust in Desdemona,

• Desdemona’s own testimony that she is innocent,

• and Emilia’s testimony that Desdemona is innocent.

Othello’s trust in Desdemona fails to undercut the synchronic justification of BDU simply

because he barely knows her. First, he has just married her (1.1.165-‐‑6). Second, he has only known her

for nine months before that (1.3.85). Third, during this time they have mostly met in her father’s

presence. Indeed, their courtship has needed Cassio as a go-‐‑between (3.3.95-‐‑102). Finally, during their

short-‐‑lived marriage, the two have hardly had any time together. So little, in fact, that many critics

argue that the play closes with the marriage unconsummated (Bloom 2005: 236).

Desdemona’s own testimony that she is innocent (4.2.34-‐‑87 and 5.2.48-‐‑76) is equally

inauspicious for a defeater. For starters, it is itself defeated in obvious ways once Othello’s trust in her is

undercut. Moreover, just before he kills her, Othello repeatedly asks her to swear that she is faithful

(4.2.35-‐‑7), and she doesn’t. All she says in reply is ‘Heaven doth truly know it’ (4.2.38), a phrase that,

lofty and dignified as it is, surely sounds evasive and incriminating in this context. Finally, he knows

her to have lied both to her father and to himself.

Emilia’s testimony fares no better. First, recall that Iago, a trusted informant and Emilia’s

husband, has warned Othello of the deviousness of Venetian women. Second, Emilia’s testimony is

negative: she has not seen signs of intimacy between Desdemona and Cassio, she avers (4.2.2-‐‑10), which

is compatible with the existence of such intimacy. By contrast, Iago’s testimony and some of the

episodes Othello witnesses constitute positive evidence incompatible with there not being such

intimacy. Third, Othello hardly knows Emilia but is convinced that he knows Iago. Finally, (1)-‐‑(7)

comprise a far more comprehensive body of evidence than Emilia’s testimony. They are evidence about

both parties to the putative affair, and they include ‘ocular’ bits as well as testimony.

BDU emerges as justified by the evidentialist’s lights, then: Iago’s testimony is undefeated, Othello has

considerable ‘ocular’ evidence, and the only candidates for defeaters fail to defeat BDU’s justification.

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3. (P1): BLAME

I have so far defended the first half of (P1) of the Othello argument. I now argue for the second half,

BLAME: Othello’s ‘fool’ epistemically censures BDU for the way it was formed. This involves showing

that ‘fool’ is epistemic (§ 3.1), normative (§ 3.2), and targets Othello’s evidence for BDU (§ 3.3).

3.1 Othello’s ‘fool’ is epistemic

When Othello calls himself a fool, he has some serious non-‐‑epistemic concerns -‐‑ a dead beloved, for

example. So, in one way it is quite perverse to suggest that he is fretting about his epistemic hygiene at

this point in the play. And, of course, I don’t mean to suggest that this is the only thing he is worried

about, just that it is one of the things he is worried about, and his ‘fool’ expresses this epistemic concern.

Clearly ‘fool’ doesn’t express moral self-‐‑reproach. Moral self-‐‑censure -‐‑ directed at his having

committed murder or at having wronged Desdemona -‐‑ would hardly be an apt explanans of ‘fool’. The

apt epithet here would be ‘monster’ or ‘villain’, not ‘fool’. The most plausible self-‐‑censuring attitude, if

it is to concern Desdemona and explain his use of ‘fool’ would be a negative attitude to his having

believed that of her.

To labour the obvious, the two primary meanings of ‘fool’ are consummately epistemic. The

first is ‘One deficient in judgement or sense, one who acts or behaves stupidly, a silly person, a

simpleton.’ The second is ‘One who is made to appear a fool; one who is imposed on by others; a dupe’

(OED). And this is how ‘fool’ and related epithets are used throughout Othello. Iago uses ‘fool’ to

describe his other dupes Roderigo (‘Thus do I ever make my fool my purse’, 1.3.356) and Cassio (‘this

honest fool’, 2.3.329). This use is not peculiar to him. For instance, in an interchange of quips, Iago,

Emilia, and Desdemona pun on foolishness as an antonym of wit, on the one hand, and as a synonym of

credulity, on the other (2.1.143-‐‑55).

3.2 Othello’s ‘fool’ is normative

It is pretty obvious that when someone calls himself a fool, he is in the business of self-‐‑appraisal. This is

corroborated by Iago. Throughout the play, he uses a whole range of related epithets to capture the

gullibility of his epistemic victims. The epithets are clearly normative. For example, he tells us that he

intends to

Make the Moor thank me, love me and reward me,

For making him egregiously an ass (2.1.302-‐‑305, my italics).

And a bit earlier, that Othello ‘will as tenderly be led by the nose/ As asses are’ (1.3.393-‐‑395). Again,

when Othello falls into a fit, Iago kindly comments:

Thus credulous fools are caught

And many worthy (4.1.44-‐‑5).

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The derision with which Iago uses synonyms of ‘fool’, such as ‘ass’, suggests that he is epistemically

condemning his victims. The last cited lines make especially vivid both the normative and distinctly

epistemic character of ‘fool’, by simultaneously reiterating the connection between folly and credulity (l.

44), and dissociating folly from considerations of moral worth (l. 45).

3.3 Othello’s ‘fool’ targets his evidence for BDU

That Othello’s ‘fool’ targets the evidence for BDU becomes obvious when we notice that it is uttered in

response to Emilia’s and Cassio’s disclosures of Iago’s fraudulence and of the truth about the

handkerchief.

The build-‐‑up to the disclosures already makes it plain that BDU and the evidence for it are at

issue:

Othello… Thy husband knew it all.

Emilia My husband?

Othello Thy husband.

Emilia That she was false to wedlock?

Othello Ay, with Cassio…

Emilia My husband?

Othello Ay, ’twas he that told me on her first,

An honest man he is…

Emilia My husband?

Othello What needs this iterance, woman? I say thy husband.

Emilia … My husband say she was false?

Othello He, woman.

I say thy husband. Dost understand the word?

My friend, thy husband, honest, honest Iago.

…

Emilia … O gull, O dolt,

As ignorant as dirt! (5.2. 138 – 162)

The first two repetitions of ‘My husband?’ betoken Emilia’s gradual awakening to Iago’s true part in the

tragedy. The third and fourth repetitions are steeped in ridicule for Othello’s trust in Iago. By his second

reiteration of his faith in ‘honest, honest Iago’, Emilia’s derision bursts uncontrollably into a barrage of

epistemic invectives -‐‑ gull, dolt, ignorant as dirt – all (stronger) synonyms of ‘fool’.

Emilia’s revelation of how the handkerchief ended up with Cassio follows (5.2.224-‐‑228). By the

time Cassio has filled in the last details (5.2.319-‐‑22), Othello needs no more external epistemic

chastising; he is ready to do it himself. That’s when he cries ‘O fool! fool! fool!’ (5.2.322). These

revelations make clear to Othello the worthlessness of all his testimonial evidence for BDU and

weightiest piece of non-‐‑testimonial evidence. What could his self-‐‑censure target other than the belief

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whose credentials have been thus exposed6?

4. (P2) The evidentialist can’t account for BLAME

This completes my defence of (P1) of the Othello argument:

JUSTIFIED: BDU is justified by the evidentialist’s lights; yet

BLAME: Othello’s ‘fool’ epistemically censures BDU for the way it was formed.

I now argue for (P2): the evidentialist can’t make sense of BLAME.

She obviously can’t do so on the basis of the available evidence. If she tries, she will lose her

grip on JUSTIFIED: if the available evidence does not support BDU, then BDU is not synchronically

justified. In that case, the evidentialist cannot account for both JUSTIFIED and BLAME. But I have

argued that both claims are plausible (§§ 2-‐‑3).

But she also can’t make sense of the claim in terms of any other epistemic notion. For

evidentialists insist that evaluation in terms of anything other than the available evidence is non-‐‑

epistemic. Here are Conee and Feldman, evidentialism’s most fervent champions:

You should gather more evidence concerning a proposition only when having a true belief about the subject matter of the proposition makes a moral or prudential difference and gathering more evidence is likely to improve your chances of getting it right (Conee and Feldman 2004: 189).

This means that they can’t account for BDU’s epistemic deficiency in terms of Othello’s having violated

an epistemic duty to inquire, since they think that all such duties are moral or prudential.

But the evidentialist can’t account for Othello’s censure in terms of any more general normative

epistemic notion either. Here, for example, is Dougherty using ‘responsibility’ as an umbrella term for

any such notion that goes beyond synchronic justification:

Each instance of epistemic irresponsibility is just an instance of purely non-‐‑epistemic irresponsibility/irrationality (either moral or instrumental) (Dougherty, 2010: 422).

So, according to evidentialism, the epistemic status of a belief at a time is solely fixed by the believer’s

evidence at that time. But then, once a belief is synchronically justified, the evidentialist has no room for

acknowledging any epistemic (normative) defect in it at that time. Since Othello’s belief is synchronically

justified, the evidentialist cannot censure it as epistemically deficient. She can thus not accommodate

BLAME.

6 The only contender is a character failing. But this wouldn’t make sense here. Othello is a universally respected general who has risen to this position precisely because of his tactical wisdom and cool judgement, and whose advice on important state decisions is continuously sought. (See, for example Ludovico’s praise of these qualities -‐‑ 4.1.257-‐‑261.)

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5. (P3) The Clifford-‐‑evidentialist can account for both JUSTIFIED and BLAME

But Clifford-‐‑evidentialism can. This is the view, recall, that the epistemic status of a belief that p at a

time is fixed by both:

(1) the belief’s fit with the believer’s evidence at the time, and

(2) whether the believer has complied with her duty of inquiry.

Clifford-‐‑evidentialism accounts for JUSTIFIED by appeal to (1), just as the evidentialist did. But

Clifford-‐‑evidentialism can additionally account for BLAME by appeal to (2).

By ‘inquiry’, I simply mean what Clifford did -‐‑ looking for more evidence for and against the

relevant proposition. When do we have an epistemic duty to look for more evidence? The answer is

fairly straightforward in cases in which we have not yet formed a belief but are inquiring into some

topic. Say that I am researching newts and stumble on a particular aquatic salamander. I have some

evidence that the salamander is a newt and some evidence that it is not. Since I want to form a belief

either way, I have an epistemic reason to look for more evidence. I could, of course, have pragmatic and

moral reasons to inquire, too. Perhaps, unless I found out whether it is a newt, my funding would be

stopped or someone would be tortured to death. But I have, in any case, an epistemic reason to inquire if

I am researching newts.

The second tenet of Clifford-‐‑evidentialism implicitly features this notion of a reason to inquire

but with a slight twist: it presupposes that we can have such a reason for beliefs which we already hold.

The evidentialist disputes that there are such epistemic reasons. If we can show that citing these reasons

is our only way of making sense of Othello’s epistemic situation, we would show the evidentialist

misguided.

The best way of getting a handle on such reasons, is by distinguishing them from defeaters. (If

they were merely defeaters, of course, then they would undermine the synchronic justification of the

belief.) We could then say that while Othello’s belief is undefeated and thus synchronically justified, it is

nonetheless epistemically deficient because he has violated his duty to inquire when he had reason to

inquire.

The Clifford-‐‑evidentialist explanation of Othello’s ‘fool’ then is that Othello is censuring himself

for having violated his duty to inquire. It is this that his jealousy prevents him from doing; hence, his

error of judgement. And he realizes this; hence, his ‘fool’.

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6. The duty of inquiry

What triggers the duty of inquiry in Othello’s case? I suggest that the answer lies in the two most

conspicuous features of his epistemic situation, which will give us the resources to start on a positive

account of our duty of inquiry.

First, although, as I have argued, Emilia’s and Desdemona’s testimony are not enough to

constitute defeaters to BDU, they do constitute reasons for Othello to inquire. At a minimum, this is

because each of them contains an explicit request to perform an easy inquiry.

The earlier ‘my husband’ quote (§ 3.3) already points in this direction. There, Emilia was asking

Othello to reflect on the source of his evidence. Here she is again, urging him to reflect and see that

infidelity simply doesn’t make sense in light of Desdemona’s character (ll. 17-‐‑19), and to consider BDU’s

origin (ll.15-‐‑16):

If any wretch have put this in your head,

Let heaven requite it with the serpent’s curse!

For if she be not honest, chaste, and true,

There’s no man happy. The purest of their wives

Is foul as slander (4.2.15-‐‑19).

The simplest thing Othello could have done, then, is to reflect on whether any ‘wretch’ has had a hand

in sowing the seed for the belief and in helping sustain it. The briefest reflection would have recalled to

him that it was all started by Iago. Indeed, as obvious from the ‘my husband’ quote in § 3.3, he realizes

this as soon as he is forced to reflect: ‘Ay, ’twas he that told me on her first’ (5.2.144).

Desdemona’s request to inquire is even more explicit, when Othello charges her with having

given Cassio the handkerchief:

No, by my life and soul!

Send for the man, and ask him (5.2.48-‐‑9).

And when Othello tells her he has seen the handkerchief on Cassio, she warns him:

He found it then.

I never gave it him. Send for him hither.

Let him confess a truth (5.2.66-‐‑8).

Crucially, the requests to inquire concern the two main groups of Othello’s evidence – Iago’s testimony

(Emilia’s request) and the adventures of the handkerchief (Desdemona’s request). As the end of the play

makes painfully clear, the recommended inquiries would have quickly and effortlessly revealed all.

The second feature of Othello’s situation is that he was asked to inquire into an epistemically

very central belief, a belief which has inferential connections to many of his other beliefs. Othello

himself makes BDU’s centrality amply clear. The first seeds of doubt planted by Iago, Othello looks at

Desdemona and exclaims:

Perdition catch my soul

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But I do love thee. And when I love thee not,

Chaos is come again (3.3.91-‐‑93).

And a little later:

If she be false, heaven mocked itself (3.3.278).

These phrases are not merely a tribute to Desdemona’s centrality to Othello’s life, but to the epistemic

centrality of the belief in her fidelity. They indicate BDU’s importance for Othello’s general self-‐‑ and

world-‐‑conception: if it turned out to be false, the passages suggest, then things would not be ordered

the way he supposed them to be (first quote), and virtue would not be what he took it to be (second

quote). Many of his other beliefs, in other words, would have to be revised. This is corroborated by the

passage cited in § 2.1, where, as Othello forms BDU, he literally collapses into incoherence and a fit,

both signifying the power of BDU to destabilize his whole world view.

Conclusion

Othello was explicitly asked to perform an easy inquiry into an epistemically central belief. That gave

him epistemic reason to inquire. Jealousy does not prevent him from going with the available evidence (as

the evidentialist says we should); that he does all too willingly, as Iago shrewdly anticipates. It prevents

him from heeding his epistemic duty to inquire. In this consists his error of judgement. And it is this

that his ‘fool’ poignantly censures.

This explanation is not available to the evidentialist, I have argued here, because she denies that

we have such an epistemic duty. The denial makes her incapable of accounting for Othello’s epistemic

situation and, hence, makes her ethics of belief an impoverished one. Taking Othello seriously, thus,

adjudicates in an important debate in epistemology, and advances it by suggesting the direction in

which to look for a positive account of our duty of inquiry.

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The duty of inquiry or why Othello was a fool

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