Changing One’s Mind in Public: Duties of Correction and Residual Responsibility

Changing one’s mind can be epistemically responsible, yet public advocacy may continue to guide belief and action after an advocate privately abandons the judgement that supported it. This article asks what, if anything, such an advocate owes those who continue to rely on her earlier endorsement. I defend two complementary claims. First, agents possess a moral liberty to revise judgements they no longer regard as justified: public assertion does not create a duty of permanent intellectual fidelity. Second, advocacy can leave residual responsibility, a forward-looking duty to give audiences a fair opportunity to reassess reliance that the advocate invited and remains distinctively able to correct. I argue that a substantial duty to update arises when four threshold conditions are met: the claim was publicly endorsed, relevant reliance was reasonably foreseeable, the endorsement remains epistemically live, and an effective update is reasonably possible without disproportionate burden. Above those thresholds, the duty is scalar. It neither implies that the earlier proposition is false nor depends on culpability in the original advocacy. Its minimum object is an effective update, which may require acknowledgement, qualification or correction, explanation, and targeted notification. Apology and repair depend on further facts about wrongdoing, damaged trust, or remediable harm. The account reconciles intellectual revisability with responsibility for the continuing authority of public speech.