[1] People are intellectually responsible if they have tried hard enough to be reflective about the truth of their beliefs, aiming not to miss any information that would cause them to abandon those beliefs as false.
"[2] Ash considered this to be an "important reason to think that intellectual responsibility is both necessary and sufficient for justification".
[2] According to Frederick F. Schmitt, "the conception of justified belief as epistemically responsible belief has been endorsed by a number of philosophers, including Roderick Chisholm (1977), Hilary Kornblith (1983), and Lorraine Code (1983).
"[2][3] Robert Audi said that people need "standards to guide an intellectually rigorous search for a mean between excessive credulity [believing too much that is false] and indiscriminate skepticism [believing too little that is true]", and he suggested five standards:[4] A separate concept was introduced by the linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky in an essay published as a special supplement by The New York Review of Books on 23 February 1967, entitled "The Responsibility of Intellectuals".
Chomsky argued that intellectuals should make themselves responsible for searching for the truth and the exposing of lies.