Within the last decade, epistemic injustice has been a valuable framework for those working on exposing oppressive practices within the healthcare system. As this work has evolved, new terminology has been added to the epistemic injustice literature to bring to light previously obscured epistemic harms in healthcare practices. This paper aims to explore an important concept that has not received the attention it deserves: epistemic isolation. By developing Ian Kidd and Havi Carel’s concept of (...) class='Hi'>epistemic isolation, a new range of epistemic harms are brought to the fore, as some of the most marginalised in our society are forced to operate from positions of ignorance. In the words of Kidd and Carel, epistemic isolation occurs in ‘situations where a person or group lacks the knowledge of, or means of access to, particular information; for instance, if they live within a politically repressive society which forbids access to the necessary sources of information in order to protect the government’s hegemony’ (183–184). This paper will demonstrate that such epistemic isolation is uniquely devastating for those with psychiatric illness, exacerbating their already challenging circumstances. (shrink)

Within the last decade, epistemic injustice has been a valuable framework for those working on exposing oppressive practices within the healthcare system. As this work has evolved, new terminology has been added to the epistemic injustice literature to bring to light previously obscured epistemic harms in healthcare practices. This paper aims to explore an important concept that has not received the attention it deserves: epistemic isolation. By developing Ian Kidd and Havi Carel’s concept of (...) class='Hi'>epistemic isolation, a new range of epistemic harms are brought to the fore, as some of the most marginalised in our society are forced to operate from positions of ignorance. In the words of Kidd and Carel, epistemic isolation occurs in ‘situations where a person or group lacks the knowledge of, or means of access to, particular information; for instance, if they live within a politically repressive society which forbids access to the necessary sources of information in order to protect the government’s hegemony’ (183–184). This paper will demonstrate that such epistemic isolation is uniquely devastating for those with psychiatric illness, exacerbating their already challenging circumstances. (shrink)

It is argued that a pure coherence theory of epistemic empirical justification fails to avoid an isolation objection according to which empirical justification has been divorced from one's total empirical evidence. Also, it is shown that several recent efforts to meet this objection either are outright failures or are irrelevant inasmuch as they diverge from epistemic coherentism. The overall moral is that we should look beyond coherentism for an adequate theory of epistemic empirical justification.

It is argued that a pure coherence theory of epistemic empirical justification fails to avoid an isolation objection according to which empirical justification has been divorced from one's total empirical evidence. Also, it is shown that several recent efforts to meet this objection either are outright failures or are irrelevant inasmuch as they diverge from epistemic coherentism. The overall moral is that we should look beyond coherentism for an adequate theory of epistemic empirical justification.

This special issue aims to delve deeper into the manifestations of epistemic injustice within asymmetric relationships, such as those between laypersons and experts (e.g. patients and physicians). We focus on distinguishing between warranted and unwarranted epistemic exclusions, recognizing that some epistemic harms may stem from justified exclusions, thus necessitating consideration of both just and unjust exclusions. Using examples from the medical field, including instances of misdiagnosis based on statistical correlations, we highlight the intricate nature of epistemic (...) exclusions and their ethical implications. While some exclusions may align with established epistemic practices, others arise from unnecessary practices fueled by identity prejudice or power dynamics, thus presenting as instances of epistemic injustice. Additionally, our exploration of epistemic gaps, particularly within complex environments like medicine, illuminates the challenges individuals face in effectively conveying their experiences and accessing pertinent information. While certain forms of epistemic isolation may be warranted, others result from structural barriers hindering knowledge exchange, prompting critical reflection on the ethical dimensions of such practices. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between causal isolation robustness analysis and independent determination robustness analysis and suggests that the triangulation of the results of different epistemic means or activities serves different functions in them. Circadian clock research is presented as a case of causal isolation robustness analysis: in this field researchers made use of the notion of robustness to isolate the assumed mechanism behind the circadian rhythm. However, in contrast to the earlier philosophical case studies on causal isolation (...) robustness analysis (Weisberg and Reisman in Philos Sci 75:106–131, 2008 ; Kuorikoski et al. in Br J Philos Sci 61:541–567, 2010 ), robustness analysis in the circadian clock research did not remain in the level of mathematical modeling, but it combined it with experimentation on model organisms and a new type of model, a synthetic model. (shrink)

This paper examines two recent approaches to the nature and functioning of economic models: models as isolating representations and models as credible constructions. The isolationist view conceives of economic models as surrogate systems that isolate some of the causal mechanisms or tendencies of their respective target systems, while the constructionist approach treats them rather like pure constructions or fictional entities that nevertheless license different kinds of inferences. I will argue that whereas the isolationist view is still tied to the representationalist (...) understanding of models that takes the model-target dyad as the basic unit of analysis, the constructionist perspective can better accommodate the way we actually acquire knowledge through them. Using the example of Tobin’s ultra-Keynesian model I will show how many of the epistemic characteristics of modelling tend to go unrecognised if too much focus is placed on the model-target dyad. (shrink)

Epistemic interactivism, an aspect of the epistemology of representation, is a cognitive intercourse between the subject and person-object of knowledge that underlies the conception of a person in Esan thought. Traditional theories of representation (especially as presented by Descartes and Locke) separated the subject from the object of knowledge, and classified persons and non-persons as object of knowledge. This separation and classification ignored the cognitive and moral values of persons, disengaged the subject from the world and burden the self (...) with solitude and isolation, and created propositional knowledge that dehumanised the relationship between the subject and person-object of knowledge. Within the theoretical framework of Hegel's epistemic interactivism (meliorated by Bowne's personalism) and Esan epistemology (in African philosophy), this book exposes the epistemic interactivism of Esan thought which unified the subject and person-object of knowledge on cognitive and moral grounds; thus providing adequate basis for personhood and resolving the dehumanised relationship between the subject and person-object of knowledge in the traditional theories of representation. Within the context of epistemic injustices, this book analyses the interactivist epistemology of indigenous Esan thought as an alternative epistemological conception of the person-object of knowledge which resolves the deficiency of the traditional theories of representation. (shrink)

Much work in moral epistemology is devoted to explaining apparent asymmetries between moral and non-moral epistemology. These asymmetries include testimony, expertise, and disagreement. Surprisingly, these asymmetries have been addressed in isolation from each other, and the explanations offered have been piecemeal, rather than holistic. In this paper, I provide the only unified account on offer of these asymmetries. According to this unified account, moral beliefs typically have a higher epistemic standard than non-moral beliefs. This means, roughly, that it (...) is typically more difficult for agents to receive the relevant positive epistemic credit (e.g. knowledge) for moral beliefs than for non-moral beliefs. After presenting this account, I consider two alternative unified accounts. According to the first alternative, moral matters are more cognitively demanding; according to the second, moral beliefs have more defeaters. I argue that neither of these alternative accounts succeed, and that my higher standards account is the best unified explanation. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that individual moral obligations and responsibility entail shared (or joint) moral obligations and responsibility. However, whether individual epistemic obligations and responsibility entail shared epistemic obligations and responsibility is rarely discussed. Instead, most discussions of doxastic responsibility focus on individuals considered in isolation. In contrast to this standard approach, I maintain that focusing exclusively on individuals in isolation leads to a profoundly incomplete picture of what we're epistemically obligated to do and when we (...) deserve epistemic blame. First, I argue that we have epistemic obligations to perform actions of the sort that can be performed in conjunction with other people, and that consequently, we are often jointly blameworthy when we violate shared epistemic obligations. Second, I argue that shared responsibility is especially important to doxastic responsibility thanks to the fact that we don't have the same kind of direct control over our beliefs that we have over our actions. In particular, I argue that there are many cases in which a particular individual who holds some problematic belief only deserves epistemic blame in virtue of belonging to a group all the members of which are jointly blameworthy for violating some shared epistemic obligation. (shrink)

Online targeting isolates individual consumers, causing what we call epistemic fragmentation. This phenomenon amplifies the harms of advertising and inflicts structural damage to the public forum. The two natural strategies to tackle the problem of regulating online targeted advertising, increasing consumer awareness and extending proactive monitoring, fail because even sophisticated individual consumers are vulnerable in isolation, and the contextual knowledge needed for effective proactive monitoring remains largely inaccessible to platforms and external regulators. The limitations of both consumer awareness (...) and of proactive monitoring strategies can be attributed to their failure to address epistemic fragmentation. We call attention to a third possibility that we call a civic model of governance for online targeted advertising, which overcomes this problem, and describe four possible pathways to implement this model. (shrink)

According to an influential Enlightenment ideal, one shouldn't rely epistemically on other people's say-so, at least not if one is in a position to evaluate the relevant evidence for oneself. However, in much recent work in social epistemology, we are urged to dispense with this ideal, which is seen as stemming from a misguided focus on isolated individuals to the exclusion of groups and communities. In this paper, I argue that that an emphasis on the social nature of inquiry should (...) not lead us to entirely abandon the Enlightenment ideal of epistemically autonomous agents. Specifically, I suggest that it is an appropriate ideal for those who serve as experts in a given epistemic community, and develop a notion of expert acceptance to make sense of this. I go on to show that, all other things being equal, this kind of epistemic autonomy among experts makes their joint testimony more reliable, which in turn brings epistemic benefits both to laypeople and to experts in other fields. (shrink)

Most of the arguments usually appealed to in order to support the view that some abstraction principles are analytic depend on ascribing to them some sort of existential parsimony or ontological neutrality, whereas the opposite arguments, aiming to deny this view, contend this ascription. As a result, other virtues that these principles might have are often overlooked. Among them, there is an epistemic virtue which I take these principles to have, when regarded in the appropriate settings, and which I (...) suggest to call ‘epistemic economy’. My purpose is to isolate and clarify this notion by appealing to some examples concerning the definition of natural and real numbers. (shrink)

Epistemic trespassers are experts who pass judgment on questions in fields where they lack expertise. What’s wrong with epistemic trespassing? I identify several limitations with a seminal analysis to isolate three desiderata on an answer to this question and motivate my own answer. An answer should explain what’s wrong in the cases that motivate inquiry into epistemic trespassing, should explain what’s wrong with epistemic trespassing even if trespassers do not acknowledge their trespassing, and these explanations should (...) not be independent of the fact that epistemic trespassing involves expertise. I also independently motivate a fourth desideratum: this account should explain the evaluative difference between different kinds of trespassing. To satisfy these desiderata, I develop a social analysis: epistemic trespassing is wrong because it is an abuse of expert authority that neglects novice vulnerabilities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Epistemic Value Commitments”W. John Livesley (bio)A disquieting feature of contemporary psychiatric nosology is the tendency to adopt positions that imply that current classifications are simply statements of fact. Clinicians and researchers alike seem to assume that the DSM diagnostic concepts are factual descriptions based only on scientific analysis that reflect the essential nature of psychiatric disorders. The architects of the DSM acknowledge in various ways that (...) this is not the case. Frances et al. (1991), for example, noted the provisional and pragmatic nature of DSM-IV. Nevertheless, these cautions are largely ignored. The DSM is partly responsible. The assertion that the DSM is atheoretical with regard to etiology, although clearly incorrect, tends to generalize to other aspects of the system. Similarly, the emphasis on description that has proved so valuable in improving diagnosis is presented as if clinical description is unencumbered by values and assumptions. Moreover, the failure to state explicitly the assumptions underlying the classification encourages the conclusion that the system is free from theoretical and other influences.In fact the DSM is theory laden. Implicit theoretical models and etiological concepts lie behind many diagnoses, including adjustment, dissociative, and posttraumatic stress disorders. Assumptions about the nature of mental disorders and the way psychopathology is organized underlie the entire system (Livesley and Jackson 1992). Pragmatic and political considerations influenced the final structure. Moreover, as Dr. Sadler and others working on the same issues (Fulford 1989, 1994; Agich 1994) point out, the DSM is also value laden. It is value laden not only in the obvious sense that some diagnostic concepts are highly evaluative or biased against certain groups (Kaplan 1983), but also in the fundamental sense that values are built into the very structure of the system (Agich 1994; Russell 1994; Wakefield 1992).Value influences begin with the definition of mental disorder. As Wakefield (1992) and others have argued, the concept of disorder cannot be value free. Values are also involved in the descriptive terms adopted as diagnostic criteria (Agich 1994) and, as Dr. Sadler convincingly demonstrates, they are intrinsic to the way that the classification is constructed and evaluated—the very aspects of the classification that are generally assumed to be value free. By emphasizing this aspect, Dr. Sadler draws attention to the fact that despite being implicit and informal, these values exert a major influence. They influence kinds of information considered relevant to the classification, the way this information is weighted and evaluated, and the way it is organized into diagnostic concepts. Thus, values shape the classification and the research agenda. This point has not [End Page 223] been fully recognized, or at least not fully acknowledged, by those responsible for developing contemporary classifications. There is a tendency to assume that any values involved in the DSM are largely evaluative and incidental, as if they crept into the system inadvertently due to our limited knowledge. The implication is that their presence is merely a temporary embarrassment to be eliminated automatically as clinical description and phenomenology are refined. But this is not the case; any classification of mental disorders inevitably consists of fact plus value (Fulford 1994). Acknowledgment of the evaluative element does not detract from the achievements of the DSM. It is not a limitation but an essential component.The general failure to attend to the non-factual or non-descriptive aspects of classification means that important aspects of classifications are neglected. The impact of pragmatic considerations, political and economic factors, and ethical and epistemic values on the organization and evaluation of scientific information has not received appropriate attention given the social, clinical, and scientific consequences of contemporary psychiatric classifications. In essence, only a limited aspect of classification has been studied, and even this has been studied in isolation from its context. Under these circumstances there is much to be gained from explicit acknowledgment and analysis of the value component. We are more likely to make progress in resolving nosological issues if we take a broad perspective.For the nosologist, Dr. Sadler makes two useful contributions to understanding the broader view. First, the analysis of value is extended beyond discussion of evaluative or ethical values into a detailed analysis of the epistemic values that... (shrink)

The notion of epistemic responsibility applied to memory has been in general examined in the framework of the responsibilities that a collective holds for past injustices, but it has never been the object of an analysis of its own. In this article, I propose to isolate and explore it in detail. For this purpose, I start by conceptualizing the epistemic responsibility applied to individual memories. I conclude that an epistemic responsible individual rememberer is a vigilant agent who (...) knows when to engage in different kinds of mental and non-mental actions in order to monitor and update her memories, and who develops and nurture different kinds of virtuous attitudes that guide those actions. These (epistemic) virtuous attitudes are oriented not only towards herself but also towards others. Whereas this conception of epistemic responsibility does not pose a problem to understand shared memories of family members and friends, it may seem suspicious when applied to large-scale collective memories. These memories, which I name historical memories, are memories of events that have a traumatic impact for the community, are permeated by unequal relations of power, keep a complex relationship with historical science, and present other characteristics that distinguish them from individual memories. But despite these differences, the analysis undertaken in this work shows that the general principles that govern the epistemic responsibility of individual and (large-scale) collective rememberers are similar, and are based on similar grounds: pragmatic considerations about the consequences of misremembering or forgetting and a feeling of care. The similarities at the individual and collective scale of the epistemic vigilant attitude that is and should be taken toward our significant past may partially justify the use of the same epithet—“memory”—to refer to these different kinds of representations. (shrink)

The paper addresses two fundamental issues in epistemic axiology. It argues primarily that curiosity, in particular its intrinsic variety, is the foundational epistemic virtue since it is the value-bestowing epistemic virtue. A response-dependentist framework is proposed, according to which a cognitive state is epistemically valuable if a normally or ideally curious or inquisitive cognizer would be motivated to reach it. Curiosity is the foundational epistemic virtue, since it bestows epistemic value. It also motivates and organizes (...) other epistemic virtues, so it is foundational and central for epistemology. The second issue is the one of the fundamental bearer of epistemic value. I shall argue that truth is the primary goal, but that mere true belief is not the fundamental bearer. Rather, the bearer is a relatively minimalist kind of knowledge. Mere true belief cannot be rationally accepted in isolation from a supporting structure. However, any efficient supporting structure introduces further epistemic goods (justification, reliability, anti-luck guarantees), thus upgrading the original true belief. Mere true belief can be neither defended, nor rationally sustained through time, due to isolation. Mere true belief cannot be rationally sustained in the face of a slightest bit of contrary evidence (the Meno insight). Therefore, mere true belief is not rationally stable. Minimal knowledge is, and this accounts for the primary and secondary value problem, and for a relatively undemanding kind of tertiary value. (shrink)

The problem of subjectivity, based on the generalizing substantification of the predicate subiective occurs first in the discussions of the postulates of Kant’s theory of knowledge. At issue is that a human being has focused on a matter, and that his subjectivity has the responsibility of isolating a determinate domain.In fact, it is up to the human subject to focus on objects and to thematize them according to his operative conditions, which is how it expresses different epistemic standpoints. Kant’s (...) philosophy provides the most adequate answers to the question about the anthropological conditioning of philosophy. My thesis is thattranscendental subjectivity includes an epistemic approach, which does not imply any kind of subjective conceptualism as opposed to forms of realism supported and structured by categories, it implies instead that without considering the epistemic standpoint, the question of the supposed primacy of transcendental over general logic or vice versa is irresoluble. (shrink)

Much of the literature concerning epistemic injustice has focused on the variety of harms done to socially marginalized persons in their capacities as potentialcontributorsto knowledge projects. However, in order to understand the full implications of the social nature of knowing, we must confront the circulation of knowledge and the capacity of epistemic agents to take up knowledge produced by others and make use of it. I argue that members of socially marginalized lay communities can sufferepistemic trust injusticeswhen potentially (...) powerful forms of knowing such as scientific understandings are generated in isolation from them, and when the social conditions required for aresponsibly-placed trustto be formed relative to the relevant epistemic institutions fail to transpire. (shrink)

In my recent book, The Epistemic Benefits of Disagreement, I develop a defense of non-conciliationism, but one that only applies in research contexts: Epistemic benefits are more likely in the offing if inquirers stick to their guns in the face of disagreement. I aim to expand my original account by examining its implications for non-inquiry beliefs. I’m particularly interested in broader worldview disagreements. I want to examine how inquirers should react upon discovering that they disagree about the truth (...) value of a particular proposition because they disagree about a whole host of related propositions. I argue that in many ways, worldview disagreements are easier to work with than disagreement over isolated propositions, in part because it is easier to provide a set of criteria by which to evaluate worldviews. I conclude that my original argument can, at least in part, be successfully expanded to include worldview disagreement. (shrink)

I foreground the principle of epistemic dependence. I isolate that relation and distinguish it from other relations and note what it does and does not entail. In particular, I distinguish between dependence and necessitation. This has many interesting consequences. On the negative side, many standard arguments in epistemology are subverted. More positively, once we are liberated from the necessary and sufficient conditions project, many fruitful paths for future epistemological investigation open up. I argue that that not being defeated does (...) not make for knowledge. And I argue for the multiple realization of epistemic properties in non-epistemic properties. (shrink)

Gaslighting is a form of domination which builds upon multiple and mutually reinforcing strategies that induce rational acquiescence. Such abusive strategies progressively insulate the victims and inflict a loss in self-respect, with powerful alienating effects. In arguing for these claims, I reject the views that gaslighting is an epistemic or structural wrong, or a moral wrong of instrumentalization. In contrast, I refocus on personal addresses that use, affect, and distort the very practice of rational justification. Further, I argue that (...) the social dimension of gaslighting cannot be fully explained by reference to bare social structures because this compound wrong succeeds via emotional person-to-person addresses. Rational justification becomes, then, the locus where the struggle for power takes place. This struggle involves and is operated by not only victims and wrongdoers but also third parties. They are crucial actors in wrongdoing as well as in rescuing the victims and restoring their normative status. Ultimately, this study shows that the deontic structure of wrong is multifocal, and its relationality points to modes of epistemic and moral rehabilitation that are also modes of social empowerment. (shrink)

Much epistemological theorizing is the attempt to specify what makes for meritorious cognition, but epistemologists have not, despite meritorious effort, achieved unity when it comes to picking out the feature and principles that are distinctive of epistemic normativity. In this essay we explain why this is the inevitable outcome. We isolate important but overlooked variations in the link between epistemological theorizing and the idea of epistemic unification, and then argue that much epistemological theorizing is misguided because it aims (...) toward complete epistemic unification when only partial epistemic unification, at best, is possible. But our arguments — based on work in moral epistemology and philosophical psychology — stop short of epistemological eliminativism, and thus we stake out a middle ground between philosophers such as Descartes, the earlier Alston, Audi, and the earlier BonJour on one hand and Rorty, Fish, and Patricia Churchland on the other. (shrink)

I argue that, on Husserl's account, affectivity, along with the closely related phenomenon of association, follows a form of sui generis lawfulness belonging to the domain of what Husserl calls motivation, which must be distinguished both (1) from the causal structures through which we understand the body third-personally, as a material thing; and also (2) from the rational or inferential structures at the level of deliberative judgment traditionally understood to be the domain of epistemic import. In effect, in addition (...) to recognizing a “space of causes” and a “space of reasons,” Husserl’s account of affectivity and the epistemology of passive synthesis in which it is situated suggest that we should recognize a separate “space of motivations.” Within this space, on Husserl’s phenomenological picture, we can isolate two different sorts of epistemic import, one belonging directly to the passive-synthetic content of experience, as explained in Husserl’s account of association and his closely aligned notion of nonlinguistic sense, and a second—my primary focus—affectivity, which is still relevant for that content, albeit indirectly, and holds epistemic import in its determination not of what that content is but of how it comes to matter for us. (shrink)

It is timely and important that new developments in conversation analysis become the subject of principled debate. John Heritage’s recent papers on the role of epistemics constitute one such development, and by re-analysing excerpts from this work, the articles in this Special Issue reveal some significant problems with a programmatic approach to epistemics. This commentary agrees with the critics that there are dangers in an overemphasis on epistemics and in using isolated utterances and proposing abstract scales and terms. But the (...) commentary also warns against totally rejecting epistemics as a domain of inquiry in CA and points to places where the critics exaggerate their criticisms in a way that makes them unnecessarily hostile. (shrink)

What is the metaphysical nature of perceptual experience? What evidence does experience provide us with? These questions are typically addressed in isolation. In order to make progress in answering both questions, perceptual experience needs to be studied in an integrated manner. I develop a unified account of the phenomenological and epistemological role of perceptual experience, by arguing that sensory states provide perceptual evidence due to their metaphysical structure. More specifically, I argue that sensory states are individuated by the perceptual (...) capacities employed and that there is an asymmetric dependence between their employment in perception and their employment in hallucination and illusion. Due to this asymmetric dependence, sensory states provide us with evidence. (shrink)

abstract Allen Buchanan argues that conventional applied ethics is impoverished and would be enriched by the addition of social moral epistemology. The aim here is to clarify this argument and to raise questions about whether such an addition is necessary about how such enrichment would work in practice. Two broad problems are identified. First, there are various kinds and sources of epistemic inertia, which act as an obstacle to epistemic change. Religion is one striking example and seems to (...) pose a deep problem for Buchanan's liberal social moral epistemology. Philosophy also exhibits a distinctive kind of epistemic inertia (metaphilosophical beliefs about the impropriety of applying philosophy are hard to shift), but also suffers from epistemic isolationism: (its arguments and conclusions are isolated from practical influence). It is concluded that not only will a liberal social moral epistemology have to overcome a pernicious epistemic inertia with regard to religious belief, but also a different kind of epistemic inertia closer to home. (shrink)

Intellectual autonomy has long been identified as an epistemic virtue, one that has been championed influentially by (among others) Kant, Hume and Emerson. Manifesting intellectual autonomy, at least, in a virtuous way, does not require that we form our beliefs in cognitive isolation. Rather, as Roberts and Wood (Intellectual virtues: an essay in regulative epistemology, OUP Oxford, Oxford, pp. 259–260, 2007) note, intellectually virtuous autonomy involves reliance and outsourcing (e.g., on other individuals, technology, medicine, etc.) to an appropriate (...) extent, while at the same time maintaining intellectual self-direction. In this essay, I want to investigate the ramifications for intellectual autonomy of a particular kind of epistemic dependence: cognitive enhancement. Cognitive enhancements (as opposed to therapeutic cognitive improvements) involve the use of technology and medicine to improve cognitive capacities in healthy individuals, through mechanisms ranging from smart drugs to brain-computer interfaces. With reference to case studies in bioethics, as well as the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, it is shown that epistemic dependence, in this extreme form, poses a prima facie threat to the retention of intellectual autonomy, specifically, by threatening to undermine our intellectual self-direction. My aim will be to show why certain kinds of cognitive enhancements are subject to this objection from self-direction, while others are not. Once this is established, we’ll see that even some extreme kinds of cognitive enhancement might be not merely compatible with, but constitutive of, virtuous intellectual autonomy. (shrink)

Although the impact of so-called “sponsorship bias” has been the subject of increased attention in the philosophy of science, what exactly constitutes its epistemic wrongness is still debated. In this paper, I will argue that neither evidential accounts nor social–epistemological accounts can fully account for the epistemic wrongness of sponsorship bias, but there are good reasons to prefer social–epistemological to evidential accounts. I will defend this claim by examining how both accounts deal with a paradigm case from medical (...) epistemology, recently discussed in a paper by Bennett Holman. I will argue that evidential accounts cannot adequately capture cases of sponsorship bias that involve the manufacturing of certainty because of their neutrality with respect to the role of non-epistemic values in scientific practice. If my argument holds, it further highlights the importance of integrating social and ethical concerns into epistemological analysis, especially in applied contexts. One can only properly grasp sponsorship bias as an epistemological problem if one resists the methodological tendency to analyze social, ethical, and epistemological issues in isolation from each other. (shrink)

What is the relationship between the epistemic norms of assertion and the epistemic norms of action/practical reasoning? Brown argues that the standards for practical reasoning and assertion are distinct (Brown 2012). In contrast, Montminy argues that practical reasoning and assertion must be governed by the same norm (Montminy 2012). Likewise, McKinnon has articulated an argument for a unified account from cases of isolated second-hand knowledge (McKinnon 2012). To clarify the issue, I articulate a distinction between Equivalence Commonality and (...) Structural Commonality. I then argue against the former by counterexamples that doubly dissociate the standards for assertion and action. Furthermore, I argue that such a double dissociation compromises knowledge accounts of both assertion and action/practical reasoning. To provide a more accurate diagnosis, I consider speech act theory and argue that principled differences between the norms of action and assertion compromise Equivalence Commonality. In contrast, a qualified version of Structural Commonality may be preserved. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to show how Moore’s early emancipation from Bradley’s absolute idealism presupposes a fundamental adherence to certain theses of absolute idealism itself. In particular, I argue that the idea of an immediate epistemic access to concepts and propositions that Moore endorses in his platonic atomism is a reworking of a form of epistemic realism already present in Bradley. Epistemic realism is the conjunction of two theses: i) reality is independent of any constructive work (...) of the human mind; ii) reality is immediately accessible to knowledge. In this paper I first focus on Moore’s early idealist phase, suggesting that it should be understood as an attempt at isolating this thesis in Bradley against Kant’s transcendental idealism. I then suggest that it is on the background of an invariant adherence to it that we should understand Moore’s later rejection of monism and idealism through his anti-psychologism. I hence explore how epistemic realism is at work in Moore’s platonic atomism and conclude with some remarks about the further significance of Moore’s rejection of Kant. (shrink)

Intellectual autonomy has long been identified as an epistemic virtue, one that has been championed influentially by Kant, Hume and Emerson. Manifesting intellectual autonomy, at least, in a virtuous way, does not require that we form our beliefs in cognitive isolation. Rather, as Roberts and Wood note, intellectually virtuous autonomy involves reliance and outsourcing to an appropriate extent, while at the same time maintaining intellectual self-direction. In this essay, I want to investigate the ramifications for intellectual autonomy of (...) a particular kind of epistemic dependence: cognitive enhancement. Cognitive enhancements involve the use of technology and medicine to improve cognitive capacities in healthy individuals, through mechanisms ranging from smart drugs to brain-computer interfaces. With reference to case studies in bioethics, as well as the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, it is shown that epistemic dependence, in this extreme form, poses a prima facie threat to the retention of intellectual autonomy, specifically, by threatening to undermine our intellectual self-direction. My aim will be to show why certain kinds of cognitive enhancements are subject to this objection from self-direction, while others are not. Once this is established, we’ll see that even some extreme kinds of cognitive enhancement might be not merely compatible with, but constitutive of, virtuous intellectual autonomy. (shrink)

Marx and Engels argue that capitalism must ultimately destroy itself because it contains an internal contradiction: Capitalism requires wage laborers at first to be in competitive isolation from one another, lest their common interests become transparent and they unite collectively to improve their employment conditions. At a certain later stage of capitalism's historical development, however, competition eventually forces capitalists to bring their workers together in common workplaces , where their shared interests can be immediately perceived and mutual grievances directly (...) communicated. The Communist Manifesto's argument for the inevitable downfall of capitalism is epistemically naïve in several ways, resting as it does on the idea that material interests are perceivable, and that an awareness of common problems translates automatically into a sense of shared interests powerful enough to motivate coordinated action for the sake of achieving economic-political reform. (shrink)

Is logic normative for belief? A standard approach to answering this question has been to investigate bridge principles relating claims of logical consequence to norms for belief. Although the question is naturally an epistemic one, bridge principles have typically been investigated in isolation from epistemic debates over the correct norms for belief. In this paper we tackle the question of whether logic is normative for belief by proposing a Kripkean model theory accounting for the interaction between logical, (...) doxastic, epistemic and deontic notions and using this model theory to show which bridge principles are implied by epistemic norms that we have independent reason to accept, for example, the knowledge norm and the truth norm. We propose a preliminary theory of the interaction between logical, doxastic, epistemic and deontic notions that has among its commitments bridge principles expressing how logic is normative for belief. We also show how our framework suggests that logic is exceptionally normative. (shrink)

Humans are prone to producing morally suboptimal and even disastrous outcomes out of ignorance. Ignorance is generally thought to excuse agents from wrongdoing, but little attention has been paid to group-based ignorance as the reason for some of our collective failings. I distinguish between different types of first-order and higher order group-based ignorance and examine how these can variously lead to problematic inaction. I will make two suggestions regarding our epistemic obligations vis-a-vis collective (in)action problems: (1) that our (...) class='Hi'>epistemic obligations concern not just our own knowledge and beliefs but those of others, too and (2) that our epistemic obligations can be held collectively where the epistemic tasks cannot be performed by individuals acting in isolation, for example, when we are required to produce joint epistemic goods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion, Psychiatry, and “Radical” Epistemic InjusticesRosa Ritunnano, MD (bio) and Ian James Kidd, PhD (bio)Hermeneutical injustice as a concept has evolved since its original formulation by Miranda Fricker (2007). The concept has been taken up in psychiatry, with its moral, epistemic and clinical premium on the interpretation of extremely complex and difficult experiences (Kidd et al., 2022). There are many varieties of hermeneutical injustice with different forms, (...) sources, degrees, effects, and interpersonal and socio-structural aspects (Medina, 2017). José Eduardo Porcher has proposed the addition of a new form of ‘radical’ hermeneutical injustice, with a case study of psychotic symptoms involving religious content.He offers different characterizations of this injustice:a particularly radical form of injustice, namely, having their own interpretation of their experiences unjustifiably undermined.a form of hermeneutical injustice that occurs when a patient diagnosed with psychosis is denied the opportunity of interpreting their own experiences within their own religious framework.These are different things. Denying someone the opportunity to interpret their experiences in their own, preferred framework is one way of undermining their interpretations. Another is forcing someone to use your own preferred framework and then belittling their own, which seems doubly wrong. Misusing some preferred interpretive framework can be as unjust as not using it. The two definitions could be combined, but then much will depend on what it means to undermine someone’s interpretation of an experience. We think there is a form of radical hermeneutical injustice—different to the one described by Porcher. Some interpretations of kinds of experience with religious content can be undermined if one is committed to a metaphysical naturalism. In these cases, one person cannot regard someone’s interpretive framework as coherent or intelligible (one that involves supernatural entities, for instance).Most discussions of hermeneutical injustice focus on social structures. Fricker notes structural dimensions to hermeneutical injustice. In a standard case, a group has unequal participation in collective practices for making and using interpretive resources (Ritunnano, 2022). In a rich analysis, José Medina describes four ‘axes’ or dimensions for distinguishing forms of hermeneutical injustice [End Page 235] (Medina, 2017). The source of these injustices can be semantic or performative. The dynamics may be structural or interpersonal, or both. Moreover, there are different degrees of breadth and depth, defined here in terms of the ‘reach’ of the injustice across one’s life, and the depth of damage to one’s hermeneutic agency, respectively (Medina, 2017, p. 45). On this model, what might count as ‘radical’ hermeneutical injustices? Deep and broad hermeneutical injustices can be radical when they are very broad in scope and very deeply damaging. This might be what Porcher has in mind. But we think there is a further option, relevant to his case study.Porcher focuses on a case where individuals experience unusual beliefs and perceptions with religious content receive a ‘psychosis’ diagnosis. The alleged injustice is that the possibility of a genuine religious experience is not recognized and validated. The example is Femi, a young man with Christian background, who enters the mental health system following the onset of psychotic ‘symptoms’. After being found “disoriented and depleted in public” – tired and undernourished—Femi is compulsorily admitted to hospital, explaining he undertook fasting and isolation in response to orders from God. During this time, Femi devoted himself to Bible reading and stopped going to work. In hospital, where the authenticity of God’s voice is challenged by clinicians, Femi is treated for acute psychosis with pharmacotherapy. While remission of symptoms follow, there is no functional recovery, and Femi is described as “unmotivated and apathetic”.Femi interpreted his experiences in religious terms, but this interpretation is not accepted or pursued by the clinicians. Is this a hermeneutical injustice? If so, is it a ‘radical’ one? Granted, Femi’s religious interpretation may be psychologically adaptive—enhancing his sense of life as meaningful (Ritunnano & Bortolotti, 2022). But this is consistent with it being a hermeneutical injustice. Plus, a religious framing may be conducive to his functional recovery after being discharged, especially in conjunction with a supportive religious community, able to help him articulate, understand, and respond to those religious experiences (see Cottingham, 2005; Wynn, 2005). However, none of... (shrink)

While it is widely regarded that intellectual humility is among the intellectual virtues, there is as of yet little consensus on the matter of what possessing and exercising intellectual humility consists in, and how it should be best understood as advancing our epistemic goals. For example, does intellectual humility involve an underestimation of one’s intellectual abilities, or rather, does it require an accurate conception? Is intellectual humility a fundamentally interpersonal/social virtue, or might it be valuable to exercise in (...) class='Hi'>isolation? To what extent does intellectual humility demand of us an appreciation of how the success of our inquiries depends on features of our social and physical environment beyond our control? These are just a few of the many questions that are crucial to getting a grip on this intellectual virtue and why we might aspire to cultivate it. Furthermore, and apart from the nature and value of humility, it is worthwhile to consider how this notion, properly understood, might have import for other philosophical debates, including those about (for example) scepticism, assertion, epistemic individualism and anti-individualism, and the philosophy of education. This special issue brings together a range of different philosophical perspectives on these and related questions to do with intellectual humility with an aim to contributing to this important and timely topic. (shrink)

This article argues that understanding everyday practices in neurobiological labs requires us to take into account a variety of different action positions: self-conscious social actors, technical artifacts, conscious organisms, and organisms being merely alive. In order to understand the interactions among such diverse entities, highly differentiated conceptual tools are required. Drawing on the theory of the German philosopher and sociologist Helmuth Plessner, the paper analyzes experimenters as self-conscious social persons who recognize monkeys as conscious organisms. Integrating Plessner’s ideas into the (...) stock of concepts used in science and technology studies provides richer descriptions of laboratory life. In particular, this theory allows an understanding of a crucial feature of neurobiological brain research: the construction of the brain as the epistemic object of brain research. As such, the brain must be isolated from the acting and interacting organism in a complicated process. (shrink)

In this brief comment on Ted Schoen’s paper, I tend to agree more than I disagree. Methodological isolation has been widely and uncritically accepted by thinkers about religion and science, and Schoen’s dissipation of the isolationist discourse deserves positive notice. For too long, science has been the bully of the epistemic neighborhood, and religious thinkers have taken refuge in methodological isolation. As Schoen argues, neither religion nor science is isolated; rather, both are interacting in the same comprehensive (...) and value-laden domain, which also includes art, poetry, ethics and metaphysics. (shrink)

Mainstream epistemologists have recently made a few isolated attempts to demonstrate the particular ways, in which specific types of knowledge are partly social. Two promising cases in point are Lackey’s dualism in the epistemology of testimony and Goldberg’s process reliabilist treatment of testimonial and coverage-support justification. What seems to be missing from the literature, however, is a general approach to knowledge that could reveal the partly social nature of the latter anytime this may be the case. Indicatively, even though Lackey (...) :345–361, 2007) has recently launched an attack against the Credit Account of Knowledge on the basis of testimony, she has not classified her view of testimonial knowledge into any of the alternative, general approaches to knowledge. Similarly, even if Goldberg’s attempt to provide a process reliabilist explanation of the social nature of testimonial knowledge is deemed satisfactory, his attempt to do the same in the case of coverage-support justification does not deliver the requisite result. This paper demonstrates that CAK can in fact provide, pace Lackey’s renunciation of the view, a promising account of the social nature of both testimonial and coverage-supported knowledge. Additionally, however, it can display further explanatory power by also revealing the social nature of knowledge produced on the basis of epistemic artifacts. Despite their disparities, all these types of knowledge count as partly social in nature, because in all these cases, according to CAK, the epistemic credit for the individual agent’s true belief must spread between the individual agent and certain parts of her epistemic community. Accordingly, CAK is a promising candidate for providing a unified approach to several and, perhaps all possible, instances of what we may call ‘weak epistemic anti-individualism’ within mainstream epistemology: i.e., the claim that the nature of knowledge can occasionally be both social and individual at the same time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The rise of social media has correlated with an increase in political polarization, which many perceive as a threat to public discourse and democratic governance. This paper presents a framework, drawing on social epistemology and the economic theory of public goods, to explain how social media can contribute to polarization, making us collectively poorer, even while it provides a preferable media experience for individual consumers. Collective knowledge and consensus is best served by having richly connected networks that are epistemically (...) integrated: individuals with diverse levels of expertise should be relatively well connected to each other. In epistemically segregated networks, by contrast, we have reason to predict collective epistemic failures. Expert knowledge will be isolated from the majority, leading average opinion to be less informed than is socially optimal, and entrenching disagreements. Because social media enables users to very easily adopt homophilous network connections – connections to those with similar opinions, education levels, and social backgrounds – it is likely to have increased epistemic segregation compared to older media platforms. The paper explains the theoretical foundations of these predictions, and sketches regulatory measures – such as taxes – that might be employed to preserve the public good of a well integrated social media network. (shrink)

We show that the contemporary debate surrounding the question “What is the norm of assertion?” presupposes what we call the quantitative view, i.e. the view that this question is best answered by determining how much epistemic support is required to warrant assertion. We consider what Jennifer Lackey ( 2010 ) has called cases of isolated second-hand knowledge and show—beyond what Lackey has suggested herself—that these cases are best understood as ones where a certain type of understanding , rather than (...) knowledge, constitutes the required epistemic credential to warrant assertion. If we are right that understanding (and not just knowledge) is the epistemic norm for a restricted class of assertions, then this straightforwardly undercuts not only the widely supposed quantitative view, but also a more general presupposition concerning the universalisability of some norm governing assertion—the presumption (almost entirely unchallenged since Williamson’s 1996 paper) that any epistemic norm that governs some assertions should govern assertions—as a class of speech act—uniformly. (shrink)

Among many reasons for which contemporary philosophers take coherentism in epistemology seriously, the most important is probably the perceived inadequacy of alternative accounts, most notably misgivings about foundationalism. But coherentism also receives straightforward support from cases in which beliefs are apparently justified by their coherence. From the perspective of those against coherentism, this means that an explanation is needed as to why in these cases coherence apparently justifies beliefs. Curiously, this task has not been carried out in a serious way (...) in the anti-coherentist literature although there is no scarcity of objections to coherentism. The traditional charge has been that justification by coherence is circular. More recently the isolation problem allegedly reveals that coherentism justifies beliefs that should not be justified. Questions have also been raised with respect to the basing relation and feasibility.1 However, these objections do not explain why some beliefs appear to be justified by their coherence. This paper fills this gap in the anti-coherentist literature by offering a noncoherentist account of justification by coherence. The paper proceeds as follows. Section I delineates the framework of discussion and develops some conceptual tools needed in later analyses. Section II argues that there are genuine cases of an increase in existing empirical justification by coherence, but that it does not require coherence to generate additional justification—coherence serves as a channel of justification among beliefs, which is no more problematic than channeling of justification from basic to derived beliefs in foundationalism. Section III makes a stronger case for justification by coherence, where each of the coherent beliefs has no independent empirical justification; but Section IV argues that even in these cases coherence need not generate justification—coherence licenses the channeling of justification from outside sources.. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy often chants the mantra, ‘Philosophy is continuous with science.’ Now Shepanski gives it a clear sense, by extracting from W. V. Quine’s writings an explicit normative epistemology – i.e. an explicit set of norms for theorizing – that applies to philosophy and science alike. It is recognizably a version of empiricism, yet it permits the kind of philosophical theorizing that Quine practised all his life. Indeed, it is that practice, more than any overt avowals, that justifies attributing this (...) set of norms to Quine. -/- The Quinean epistemology is supported by a metaphilosophy that judges epistemologies by the tenability of their consequences. Shepanski explores the Quinean epistemology’s consequences for inductive and abductive inference, for mathematical entities, for science and for common sense. Moreover, he finds that it continues to be fruitful, as illustrated by a case study in which Quinean methods lead to a new formal treatment of the propositional attitudes. Finally, there is critical discussion of popular alternative views, including foundationalism, the centrality of knowledge, and Quine’s own epistemological naturalism. -/- By focusing on Quine’s normative epistemology, Shepanski illuminates a part of Quine’s thought that has hitherto been insufficiently discussed, and provides a tractable starting point for readers who are new to Quine. Most importantly, he isolates the part of Quine’s thought that has the greatest potential impact outside epistemology, outside philosophy of language, and even outside philosophy. (shrink)

Despite social epistemologists’ condemnation of epistemic bubbles (Nguyen, 2018; Miller & Record, 2013; Pariser 2011; Simpson, 2012; Sunstein 2017), we defend that they may be epistemically beneficial for marginalized communities, especially when they help insiders to make sense of their lived experiences, that is, acquiring hermeneutical resources. Building on the previous work of Anderson (2021), Sunstein (2017) and Frost-Arnold (2021), who have already highlighted the epistemic benefits of certain bubbles, we focus on the case of Cystic Fibrosis (CF), (...) a chronic illness with severe symptoms, whose patients face difficulties to understand their own experience (for example, what being ‘young’ means with a reduced life expectancy). We then explain how they engage in what we assess as, following Medina & Whitt (2021), “epistemic activism” in a Facebook group meant for patients to share and interact with their favourite CF-related memes. The case illustrates how conditions of isolation and technological affordances contribute to a hermeneutical gain in the marginalized community (augmenting the community’s agency, amplificating their voices, and allowing them to develop and exercise their epistemic capacities). Lastly, we present the ethical guidelines (inspired in Frost-Arnold 2023) we have followed to engage in this sort of online research. (shrink)

In recent years, we have witnessed increased interest in alternatives to the dominant corporate social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter (now X), and TikTok. Tired of disinformation, harassment, privacy violations, and the general degradation of platforms, users and technologists have looked for non-corporate alternatives. Not-for-profit social media platforms emerging from free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) communities based on non-centralized infrastructure have emerged as promising alternatives. For applied epistemology of the internet, these alternative social media platforms present an opportunity to (...) study different ways of producing knowledge together online. This paper evaluates the epistemic potential for such alternative, non-corporate social media. I present an epistemological framework for analyzing the epistemic promises and perils of alternative social media. Then I apply this framework to the case of Mastodon, a federated, open-source microblogging platform. Mastodon’s structure and culture of openness present opportunities to avoid many of the epistemic perils of biased and untrustworthy large corporate platforms. However, Mastodon’s risks include techno-elitism, white ignorance, and isolated, epistemically toxic communities. (shrink)

The import of computational learning theories and techniques on the ethics of human-robot interaction is explored in the context of recent developments of personal robotics. An epistemological reflection enables one to isolate a variety of background hypotheses that are needed to achieve successful learning from experience in autonomous personal robots. The conjectural character of these background hypotheses brings out theoretical and practical limitations in our ability to predict and control the behaviour of learning robots in their interactions with humans. Responsibility (...) ascription problems, which concern damages caused by learning robot actions, are analyzed in the light of these epistemic limitations. Finally, a broad framework is outlined for ethically motivated scientific inquiries, which aim at improving our capability to understand, anticipate, and selectively cope with harmful errors by learning robots. (shrink)

I start by using “Frankfurt-type” examples to cast preliminary doubt on the “Objective View” - that one is blameworthy for an action only if that action is objectively wrong, and follow by providing further arguments against this view. Then I sketch a replacement for the Objective View whose core is that one is to blame for performing an action, A, only if one has the belief that it is morally wrong for one to do A, and this belief plays an (...) appropriate role in the etiology of one's A-ing. I next defend this core against recently advanced objections and then show how it helps with defusing a skeptical challenge from the direction of causal determinism against blameworthiness. Finally, I exploit the core to isolate an analogous epistemic core for nonmoral but “normative” varieties of blameworthiness. (shrink)

This paper discusses the most persistent controversial issue that occurred in Western educational philosophy ever since Socrates questioned the Sophists: the role of truth in teaching. Ways of teaching these kinds of controversy issues are briefly considered to isolate their epistemic characteristics, which will enable the interpretation of Plato and Dewey as exemplars of rationalism and empiricism regarding the role of knowledge in the curriculum and thus include their partial truths in the epistemic ethos of teaching. The consideration (...) of pedagogy will then include the partial truths of rationalism and empiricism in the epistemic ethos of teaching by following Kant's ‘Concepts without percepts are empty; perceptions without conceptions are blind’.This claim, however, is narrowed down in two ways compatible with postmodernism and the heavy emphasis on constructionism in faculties of education. After quoting Harry Broudy's statement that the educational epistemic ethos should be domain‐specific, guided by the experts’ inquiry protocols in each curricular area, it is narrowed down further with Maxine Greene's explication that it should be pluralistic and lesson‐specific. This epistemic ethos is not argued as a synthesis but as an aggregate of the partial truths of various epistemologies in the spirit of the postmodern doubt in any one theory of knowledge without throwing out the baby with the dirty bath water.Finally, the streams of consciousness involved in teaching and learning good knowledge are described phenomenologically to disclose how truth can be disclosed in teaching, thereby grounding propositional knowledge, for example, ontologically in the being of the student and in the being of the world. (shrink)

Imagine that you’ve just spent the last several months reading Don Quixote—and that you’re all but fifty pages away from finishing. Unfortunately for you, the book was due back before you could finish, and so begrudgingly, you turn it back in, having not known what happens in the end. Riddled with curiosity, you make your best guess about Quixote’s eventual fate and suppose it is the most likely scenario. Entirely unbeknownst to you, it turns out that you were right; Quixote’s (...) ultimate destiny was just what you had supposed it would be! What luck! Quite naturally, we would say that, when all is said and done, knowing what happens to Don Quixote in the end is surely better than merely believing truly what happens in the end—the predicament you find yourself in having not actually finished the book. After all, it was just by dumb luck that you guessed the ending right—a point you could deny only on the pain of some embarrassing claim of clairvoyance. We might put the idea more generally by saying that from a purely cognitive standpoint, it is better to know the truth than to stumble upon it by luck. This general idea betrays two distinct insights about knowledge. The first is the insight that while true belief is valuable, knowledge is distinctively so—knowing the truth is valuable in a way that merely having a true belief is not. The second insight here is that you lack knowledge if it’s just by dumb luck that the belief you have is true. Call these the value insight and the anti-luck insight: Value insight: Knowledge is distinctively valuable. Luck insight: Knowledge excludes luck. In contemporary epistemology, and especially over the past five years, separate projects have arisen in correspondence with these distinct intuitions: value-driven epistemology is concerned with issues surrounding the first insight, and projects under the description of anti-luck epistemology have arisen out of the second. Now we might reasonably suppose that whatever it is that makes knowledge relevantly un-lucky would be something we could cite in accounting for what makes knowledge distinctively valuable. This natural idea reflects the thought that the insights about value and luck should not be entirely disconnected. There is a problematic tension though between this reasonable expectation and the resources epistemologists have provided for us to accommodate it. What explains the tension is the fact that value-driven and anti-luck projects in epistemology have by and large been developed apart from each other, each focused on one of our two guiding insights at the expense of the other. Consequently, value-driven epistemology’s focus on the normative but not modal properties of knowledge leaves these two aspects of knowledge disconnected much in the way that anti-luck epistemology’s focus on the modal but not the normative properties of knowledge leaves these same aspects disconnected. The lacuna here between what value driven epistemologists tell us about what makes knowledge valuable and what the anti-luck epistemologists tell us about what makes knowledge exclude luck is troubling. We may resist that there should be such a disconnect if we avoid the common flaw shared by each of these projects pursued in isolation from the other. The flaw here is essentially one of naivety: that of supposing that we can give an account of knowledge exclusively in terms of conditions that would accommodate one of the two insights, while still managing to account for the other insight—which itself we did not appeal to directly in our theory of what knowledge is—e.g. in the analysis provided of it. This is the flaw behind the value-driven approaches that think about knowledge in terms of valuable properties they can’t explain to ensure modal robustness and the anti-luck projects that think of knowledge in terms of modal properties into which we can’t well smuggle the normativity needed to explain its value. To avoid this flaw, then, we should let both of these insights dictate the conditions our analysis offers as essential to knowing. The project with which I’ll be engaging here develops substantially on this widely overlooked and promising idea. (shrink)