IMMORAL BELIEFS Bana Bashour Abstract In this paper, I argue that there exists a class of immoral beliefs. These beliefs are immoral not for the usual reasons, i.e. because of their tendency to cause harm, their immoral acquisition, or the fact that they involve unjustified moral judgments. Rather, the class of beliefs to which I wish to draw attention includes beliefs that do not even have any moral content, but whose non-moral content is still morally significant. These beliefs are immoral because holding them constitutes an immoral condition of the belief-holder. This usually involves a moral failure of the belief-holder. We may object to such beliefs for all of the usual reasons, but I wish to draw attention to their objectionable content based on the kind of char- acter they represent a person as having. 1 We often assess beliefs as true or false, justified or unjustified. However, we rarely discuss the moral status of beliefs. In this paper I wish to argue that there exists a class of immoral beliefs. These beliefs are immoral not for the usual reasons, i.e. their tendency to cause harm, their immoral acquisition, or the fact that they involve unjustified moral judgments. Rather, the class of beliefs to which I wish to draw attention includes beliefs that do not even have any moral content, but whose non-moral content is still morally significant. These beliefs are immoral because holding them constitutes an immoral condition of the belief-holder. This usually involves a moral failure of the belief-holder. We may object to such beliefs for all of the usual reasons, but I wish to draw attention to their objectionable content based on the kind of character they represent a person as having. Before making my case, I would like to distinguish between the set of beliefs that I will call ‘constitutively immoral’ 2 and other 1 I would like to thank Ray Brassier, Chris Johns and Hans Muller for reading and commenting on drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Rami Elali and Karim Barakat for the productive conversations, and the anonymous referee at Ratio for very helpful suggestions. 2 I would like to thank the anonymous referee at Ratio for suggesting this label. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9329.2012.00549.x © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd