Suspensive Wronging

According to the thesis of doxastic wronging, we can wrong people in virtue of bearing certain beliefs toward them. In this chapter, I motivate and defend a similar view, the thesis of suspensive wronging, that we can wrong people in virtue of bearing an indecision attitude toward certain questions that bear on particular certain people. I explore the extent to which the thesis of suspensive wronging fits with certain prominent conceptions of suspension of judgment, including the sui generis attitude view, the higher-order attitude view, and the credence view, and argue that it aligns with each of them. I then argue that reflection on cases of suspensive wronging reveals that the common characterization of suspension of judgment as a kind of “neutrality” is nevertheless problematic, arguing that we should distinguish between attitudinal neutrality and property neutrality-i.e., neutrality on the truth of an answer to a question vs. the neutrality of the normative properties of the attitude that responds to a question. Finally, I consider whether widespread views about the involuntariness of belief and the right kind of reasons for belief refute the suspensive wronging thesis, argue that they do not, and conclude with some reflections on the relationship between the suspensive wronging thesis and moral encroachment on suspension of judgment.