In Epistemic injustice, Miranda Fricker makes a tremendous contribution to theorizing the intersection of social epistemology with theories of justice. Theories of justice often take as their object of assessment either interpersonal transactions (specific exchanges between persons) or particular institutions. They may also take a more comprehensive perspective in assessing systems of institutions. This systemic perspective may enable control of the cumulative effects of millions of individual transactions that cannot be controlled at the individual or institutional levels. This is (...) true not only with respect to the overall distribution of such goods as income and wealth, but also with respect to the goods of testimonial and hermeneutical justice. Cognitive biases that may be difficult for even epistemically virtuous individuals to correct on their own may be more susceptible to correction if we focus on the principles that should govern our systems of testimonial gathering and assessment. Hence, while Fricker’s focus on individual epistemic virtue is important, we also need to consider what epistemic justice as a virtue of social systems would require. My paper will indicate some directions forward on this front, focusing on the need for integration of diverse institutions and persons engaged in inquiry. (shrink)

The author analyses the problem of the communication from the epistemological point of view, noting that the interest to the theme is obviously determined by the enormous ambiguity and by the disciplinary vagueness of the communication's notion itself. It is argued that it is the philosophical conceptualization of the communication that allows in a certain sense to «save» philosophy itself. The author notes that the philosophical studies of communication as if return the relevance to the classical philosophical problems: to the (...) (communicative) sphere, (communicative) time, (social) causality, (collective) subject and object, filling them with the meaningful characteristics and testing their concepts by the experience of the functioning of real society and communication. He concludes that the epistemological content of the concept of communication is comes together with several aspects of human cognition. The first aspect has to do with the dimensions for defining the adequacy for determination of the statement made by the Other (i.e. the other participant), given that the content of the Other's consciousness is unavailable. The second aspect is related to the principle of a double purpose of any communication: on the one hand, integration and mutual understanding and, on the other, informational description of the subject of the message. The third aspect is that communication is based on the most important epistemological distinction between knowledge and ignorance, i.e. on the predominance of any information to one participant of the communication and of its uncertainty to the other participant, and that such a situation actually conditions the formation of communication systems, as well as of a wide variety of forms of sociality. The author also addresses the problem of whether contemporary media make communication at all possible since they decrease the impact that the secrecy of the Other's consciousness has on communication by triggering a communicative act. (shrink)

This article examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon, “Epistemic Landscapes and the Division of Cognitive Labor”, that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the division of cognitive labor, identifying the errors (...) that led to their conclusions. Furthermore, we generalize the epistemic landscape model, showing that one should be skeptical about the benefits of social learning in epistemically complex environments. (shrink)

Where there is trust, there is also vulnerability, and vulnerability can be exploited. Epistemic trust is no exception. This chapter maps the phenomenon of the exploitation of epistemic trust. I start with a discussion of how trust in general can be exploited; a key observation is that trust incurs vulnerabilities not just for the party doing the trusting, but also for the trustee (after all, trust can be burdensome), so either party can exploit the other. I apply these (...) considerations to epistemic trust, specifically in testimonial relationships. There, we standardly think of a hearer trusting a speaker. But we miss an important aspect of this relationship unless we consider too that the speaker standardly trusts the hearer. Given this mutual trust, and given that both trustees and trusters can exploit each other, we have four possibilities for exploitation in epistemic-trust relationships: a speaker exploiting a hearer (a) by accepting his trust or (b) by imposing her trust on him, and a hearer exploiting a speaker (c) by accepting her trust or (d) by imposing his trust on her. One result is that you do not need to betray someone to exploit him – you can exploit him just as easily by doing what he trusts you for. (shrink)

This book takes seriously the idea that at least some groups, such as corporations and governments, are genuine agents with mental states on which they act. For instance, in morally assessing a government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, we are interested in what the government knew at various points as the pandemic developed. And in predicting the outcome of the current war in Ukraine, we might ask what Russia believes about the West’s determination to defend Ukraine. The book examines a (...) range of phenomena central to the epistemic and moral assessment of groups: group evidence, group belief, the basis of group belief, group justified belief, group knowledge, group motivation, and group blameless ignorance. Overall, the book defends a ‘non-summative’ functionalist view of groups. On a non-summative account of group phenomena, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for a group to have a property α that some/most/all of its members have that same property. By contrast, on a summative account it is necessary and sufficient for a group to have a property α that some/most/all of its members have that same property. Across the book I provide new arguments for non-summativism and new accounts of key group phenomena many of which have been relatively neglected in existing literature. While I provide independent arguments for a non-summative view of each phenomenon discussed, the conclusions of the chapters are mutually reinforcing. For adopting a non-summative account of one group phenomenon motivates adopting a non-summative account of others. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind and epistemologists are increasingly making room in their theories for epistemic emotions (E-emotions) and, drawing on metacognition research in psychology, epistemic – or noetic or metacognitive – feelings (E-feelings). Since philoso- phers have only recently begun to draw on empirical research on E-feelings, in particular, we begin by providing a general characterization of E-feelings (section 1) and reviewing some highlights of relevant research (section 2). We then turn to philosophical work on E-feelings and E-emotions, situating (...) the contributions to the focus section (two articles devoted to E-feelings and two devoted to E-emotions) with respect to both the existing literature and each other (section 3). We conclude by brie y describing some promising avenues for further philosophical research on E-feelings and E-emotions (section 4). (shrink)

This book presents an original discussion and analysis of epistemic peer disagreement. It reviews a wide range of cases from the literature, and extends the definition of epistemic peerhood with respect to the current one, to account for the actual variability found in real-world examples. The book offers a number of arguments supporting the variability in the nature and in the range of disagreements, and outlines the main benefits of disagreement among peers i.e. what the author calls the (...) benefits to inquiry argument. (shrink)

A novel solution is offered for how emotional experiences can function as sources of immediate prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs, and in such a way that suffices to halt a justificatory regress. Key to this solution is the recognition of two distinct kinds of emotional skill (what I call generative emotional skill and doxastic emotional skill) and how these must be working in tandem when emotional experience plays such a justificatory role. The paper has two main parts, the first (...) negative and the second positive. The negative part criticises the epistemic credentials of Epistemic Perceptualism (e.g., Tappolet 2012, 2016; Doring 2003, 2007; Elgin 2008; Roberts 2003), the view that emotional experience alone suffices to prima facie justify evaluative beliefs in a way that is analogous to how perceptual experience justifies our beliefs about the external world. The second part of the paper develops an account of emotional skill and uses this account to frame a revisionary form of Epistemic Perceptualism that succeeds where the traditional views could not. I conclude by considering some objections and replies. (shrink)

Contemporary debates about epistemic luck and its relation to knowledge have traditionally proceeded against a tacit background commitment to cognitive internalism, the thesis that cognitive processes play out inside the head. In particular, safety-based approaches (e.g., Pritchard 2005; 2007; Luper-Foy 1984; Sainsbury 1997; Sosa 1999; Williamson 2000) reveal this commitment by taking for granted a traditional internalist construal of what I call the cognitive fixedness thesis—viz., the thesis that the cognitive process that is being employed in the actual world (...) is always ‘held fixed’ when we go out to nearby possible worlds to assess whether the target belief is lucky in a way that is incompatible with knowledge. However, for those inclined to replace cognitive internalism with the extended mind thesis (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998), a very different, ‘active externalist’ version of the cognitive fixedness thesis becomes the relevant one for the purposes of assessing a belief’s safety. The aim here will be to develop this point in a way that draws out some of the important ramifications it has for how we think about safety, luck and knowledge. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper offers an account of institutional testimonial justice and describes one way that it breaks down, which we call institutional opacity. An institution is opaque when it becomes resistant to epistemic evaluation and understanding by its agents and users. When one cannot understand the inner workings of an institution, it becomes difficult to know how to comport oneself testimonially. We offer an account of an institutional ethos to explain what it means for an institution to be testimonially (...) just; we then describe how an ethos of institutional testimonial justice can break down when the institution becomes opaque. An opaque institution is especially problematic for individuals and groups already rendered epistemically vulnerable during their interactions with that institution, which we call epistemically vulnerabilised individuals. We articulate the features of an encounter between an epistemically vulnerabilised individual and an opaque institution. We end by tracing ameliorative strategies that could help repair a deteriorated institutional ethos of testimonial justice. (shrink)

Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search ‎engines, which actively shape their epistemic surroundings. Yet, a satisfying account ‎of the epistemic responsibilities associated with them does not exist. We analyze ‎automatically generated search suggestions from the perspective of social ‎epistemology to illustrate how epistemic responsibilities associated with a ‎technology can be derived and assigned. Drawing on our previously developed ‎theoretical framework that connects responsible epistemic behavior to ‎practicability, we address two questions: first, given the (...) different technological ‎possibilities available to searchers, the search technology, and search providers, ‎who should bear which responsibilities? Second, given the technology’s ‎epistemically relevant features and potential harms, how should search terms be ‎autocompleted? Our analysis reveals that epistemic responsibility lies mostly with ‎search providers, which should eliminate three categories of autosuggestions: those ‎that result from organized attacks, those that perpetuate damaging stereotypes, and ‎those that associate negative characteristics with specific individuals.‎. (shrink)

It has been argued that humans can face an ethical/epistemic dilemma over the automatic stereotyping involved in implicit bias: ethical demands require that we consistently treat people equally, as equally likely to possess certain traits, but if our aim is knowledge or understanding our responses should reflect social inequalities meaning that members of certain social groups are statistically more likely than others to possess particular features. I use psychological research to argue that often the best choice from the (...) class='Hi'>epistemic perspective is the same as the best choice from the ethical perspective: to avoid automatic stereotyping even when this involves failing to reflect social realities in our judgements. This argument has an important implication: it shows that it is not possible to successfully defend an act of automatic stereotyping simply on the basis that the stereotype reflects an aspect of social reality. An act of automatic stereotyping can be poor from an epistemic perspective even if the stereotype that is activated reflects reality. (shrink)

Classical conceptual distinctions in philosophy of education assume an individualistic subjectivity and hide the learning that can take place in the space between child and adult. Grounded in two examples from experience I develop the argument that adults often put metaphorical sticks in their ears in their educational encounters with children. Hearers’ prejudices cause them to miss out on knowledge offered by the child, but not heard by the adult. This has to do with how adults view education, knowledge, as (...) much as child, and is even more extreme when child is also black. The idea is what Miranda Fricker calls ‘epistemic injustice’ which occurs when someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower. Although her work concerns gender and race, I extrapolate her radical ideas to child. Awareness of the epistemic injustice that is done to children and my proposal for increased epistemic modesty and epistemic equality could help transform pedagogical spaces to include child subjects as educators. A way forward is suggested that involves ‘cracking’ the concept of child and a different non-individualised conception of education. (shrink)

A recent paper by Bullock (2018) raises a dilemma for proponents of epistemic paternalism. If epistemic paternalists contend that epistemic improvements contribute to one’s wellbeing, then their view conflates with general paternalism. Instead, if they appeal to the notion of a distinctive epistemic value, their view is unjustified, in that concerns about epistemic value fail to outweigh concerns about personal sovereignty. In this chapter, I address Bullock’s challenge in a way that safeguards the legitimacy of (...) epistemic paternalism, albeit restricting its scope to a limited range of cognitive projects. After shedding light on a problem with how Bullock singles out cases to which the dilemma applies, I argue that there is at least one reasonable way of interpreting the notion of ‘personal autonomy’ which legitimates and justifies undertaking epistemically paternalistic interferences for one’s epistemic good. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between scepticism and epistemic relativism in the context of recent history and philosophy of science. More specifically, it seeks to show that significant treatments of epistemic relativism by influential figures in the history and philosophy of science draw upon the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. The paper begins with a presentation of the problem of the criterion as it occurs in the work of Sextus Empiricus. It is then shown that significant treatments of (...) epistemic relativism in recent history and philosophy of science (critical rationalism, historical philosophy of science and the strong programme) draw upon the problem of the criterion. It is briefly suggested that a particularist response to the problem of the criterion may be put to good use against epistemic relativism. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a debate focusing on the question of whether groups can literally have beliefs. For the purposes of epistemology, however, the key question is whether groups can have knowledge. More specifi cally, the question is whether “group views” can have the key epistemic features of belief, viz., aiming at truth and being epistemically rational. I argue that, while groups may not have beliefs in the full sense of the word, group views can have these key (...) class='Hi'>epistemic features of belief. However, I argue that on Margaret Gilbert's infl uential “plural subject” account of group belief, group views are unlikely to be epistemically rational. (shrink)

Since its 2007 publication, Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice has sparked a vigorous conversation in analytic philosophy about how social power corrodes individual’s epistemic capacities and distorts collective meaning-making in unjust ways. Yet for all its normative insights into social silencing, I argue that Fricker’s theorization of epistemic dysfunction remains too individualized, cognitivist, and dematerialized to account for racialized imaginaries. Rather than view racisms as normal and normative in racist cultures, Fricker frames identity-driven prejudice as a troubling aberration (...) from otherwise unblemished epistemic and moral norms. This leads her into adopting an overly voluntarist and idealist theory of social change that centres training better knowers rather than unmaking racialized worlds. Ultimately, I contend that we should return to a materialist theory of ideology, following the work of Stuart Hall. Doing so jettisons the narrow focus on individual epistemic failures and instead problematizes how certain social ideas consolidate and reproduce racial hierarchies. (shrink)

In this paper, we reconsider the notion of epistemic trespassing and attempt to explore possible scenarios in which it could lead to positive outcomes in scientific research and information dissemination. As we will point out, some of the significant discoveries in the history of science would not have been possible were it not for the epistemic trespassers, whose shift in paradigm changed the approach to specific issues for the better. Furthermore, we will present instances where individuals, often labeled (...) as ‘trespassers’ – those who venture into fields outside their expertise – can be considered trustworthy and reliable sources of testimony. Consequently, epistemic trespassing turned out to be essential for the advancement of science. Epistemic trespassing in our age is virtually inevitable – whether it be from a political perspective (to preserve democratic values) or due to purely practical reasons (i.e. searching for information online). There are interdisciplinary fields where a strictly negative characterization of epistemic trespassing would question their methodology since these disciplines rely on experts from various fields. For these reasons, we advocate for a more charitable approach to epistemic trespassing and greater public education to help them distinguish between correct and false information. (shrink)

In this paper, I raise two questions about epistemic commitments, and thus, indirectly, about our epistemic agency. Can we rationally defend such commitments when challenged to do so? And if so, how?

It is widely acknowledged that epistemic modals admit of inter-subjective flexibility. This paper introduces intra-subjective flexibility for epistemic modals and draws on this flexibility to argue that fallibilism is consistent with the standard account of epistemic modals.

The deliberative turn in political philosophy sees theorists attempting to ground democratic legitimacy in free, rational, and public deliberation among citizens. However, feminist theorists have criticized prominent accounts of deliberative democracy, and of the public sphere that is its site, for being too exclusionary. Iris Marion Young, Nancy Fraser, and Seyla Benhabib show that deliberative democrats generally fail to attend to substantive inclusion in their conceptions of deliberative space, even though they endorse formal inclusion. If we take these criticisms seriously, (...) we are tasked with articulating a substantively inclusive account of deliberation. I argue in this article that enriching existing theories of deliberative democracy with Fricker's conception of epistemic in/justice yields two specific benefits. First, it enables us to detect instances of epistemic injustice, and therefore failures of inclusion, within deliberative spaces. Second, it can act as a model for constructing deliberative spaces that are more inclusive and therefore better able to ground democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an account of epistemic justice as a character-based intellectual virtue that a truth-desiring agent would want to possess. The agent who possesses this virtue is just towards other knowers in matters pertaining to epistemic goods and this involves a regard for agents as knowers. Notably, the virtue of epistemic justice has a unique position among virtues: epistemic justice is presupposed by every other intellectual virtue, while remaining a standalone virtue itself. Correspondingly, (...) I also offer an account of the vice of epistemic injustice as an epistemically dis-valuable trait of character. The agent who possesses this trait is unjust towards other knowers in matters pertaining to epistemic goods and this involves a disregard for agents as knowers. Most importantly, I highlight that the vice of epistemic injustice is entailed by every other epistemic vice, though it remains a distinct vice. (shrink)

I start with a critical discussion of some attempts to ground epistemic normativity in curiosity. Then I develop three positive proposals. The first of these proposals is more or less purely philosophical; the second two reside at the interdisciplinary borderline between philosophy and psychology. The proposals are independent and rooted in different literatures. Readers uninterested in the first proposal (and the critical discussion preceding it) may nonetheless be interested in the second two proposals, and vice versa. -/- The proposals (...) are as follows. First I argue that, among several ways in which the notion of curiosity might be used to delineate significant truths from trivial ones, a particular way is the most promising. Second, I argue that curiosity has some underappreciated epistemic roles involving memory. Third, I argue that curiosity has some underappreciated epistemic roles involving coherence. (shrink)

According to Universal Epistemic Deontology, all of our doxastic attitudes are open to deontological evaluations of obligation and permissibility. This view thus implies that we are responsible for all of our doxastic attitudes. But many philosophers have puzzled over whether we could be so responsible. The paper explores whether this puzzle can be resolved, and Universal Epistemic Deontology defended, by appealing to a view of responsibility I call the Revelatory View. On that view, an agent is responsible for (...) something when it reveals the kind of person the agent is. I explore four ways of developing the Revelatory View and argue that none ultimately defend Universal Epistemic Deontology. (shrink)

In this chapter, I produce counterexamples to Presuppositional Epistemic Contextualism (PEC), a view about the semantics of ‘knowledge’-ascriptions that I have argued for elsewhere. According to PEC, the semantic content of the predicate ‘know’ at a context C is partly determined by the speakers’ pragmatic presuppositions at C. The problem for the view that I shall be concerned with here arises from the fact that pragmatic presuppositions are sometimes known to be true by the speakers who make them: hence (...) the Problem of Known Presuppositions. After discussing several unsuccessful ways to solve the problem, I propose the addition of a new Lewisian rule of proper ignoring to the semantics of PEC--namely, the Rule of Evidence-Based Ignoring. If the proposed account succeeds, the Problem of Known Presuppositions has a straightforward solution within the framework of PEC. (shrink)

Mental healthcare research increasingly focuses the needs of trans people and, in doing so, acknowledges knowledge and epistemic resources developed in trans communities. In this article, we aim to raise awareness of an ethical issue described by Emmalon Davis that may arise in the context of engaging with community knowledge and epistemic resources: the risk of epistemic appropriation. It is composed of two harms (1) a detachment of epistemic resources developed in the originating community and (2) (...) a misdirection of these epistemic resources for epistemic goals of a dominant community. In this article, we map and discuss the ethical concerns in using knowledge originating in trans communities in terms of epistemic appropriation in the context of mental healthcare research. We first argue that misgendering, failing to reference non-academic sources and a lack of attribution in community authorship are forms of epistemicdetachment. Second, we problematize cases of epistemicmisdirectionof trans epistemic resources, focusing on the examples of detransition and transition regret. We discuss harms related to epistemic appropriation in relationship to risks to safety. The article aims to raise awareness about the risk of epistemic appropriation both in researchers engaging with trans knowledge as well as in mental healthcare workers who seek information on trans. (shrink)

Alessandra Taniesini's ‘The Mismeasure of the Self’ develops an internalist account of epistemic vice. On this view, epistemic vices are grounded in attitudes towards the self: fatalism, self-satisfaction, narcissistic infatuation, and self-abasement. The account is internalist insofar as it claims to ground both the nature and the normativity of vice within the subject's skull. In this paper, I argue against vice internalism: epistemic vices, I show, need a normative hook outside the skull to explain their vicious nature. (...) In other words, the ‘mis’ in the ‘mismeasure’ of the self demands externalist unpacking. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a politico-philosophical perspective to reassess the much-contested role of truth in politics to put forth a principle of political action that will make sense of a “right to unmanipulated factual information,” which Hannah Arendt understands as crucial for establishing freedom of opinion. In developing a principle of epistemic responsibility, I will show that “factual truth” plays a key role in Arendt’s account of political action and provides a normative order that can extricate her account (...) from charges of immoralism. The article will be divided into three sections: section 1 deals with the distinction between rational truths and factual truths, and the question of their validity, section 2 deals with what a principle of political action is, and lastly, section 3 proposes a principle of “epistemic responsibility” that becomes action-guiding in the political sphere, in order to shed new light on the 2013 Gezi Park protest, one of the recent democratic uprisings of our century. (shrink)

It is widely thought that sceptical arguments, if correct, would show that everyday empirical knowledge‐claims are false. Against this, I argue that the very generality of traditional sceptical arguments means that there is no direct incompatibility between everyday empirical claims and sceptical scenarios. Scepticism calls into doubt, not ordinary empirical beliefs, but philosophical attempts to give a deep ontological explanation of such beliefs. G. E. Moore's attempt to refute scepticism (and idealism) was unsuccessful, because it failed to recognise that philosophical (...) scepticism operates on a different level from that on which we make – or doubt – particular empirical claims. And, as I argue with specific reference to work by Nozick and Fogelin, Moore’s basic confusion is still widely shared in contemporary discussions of scepticism. (shrink)

In this paper I consider a recent argument of Timothy Williamson’s that epistemic internalism and content externalism are indeed incompatible, and since he takes content externalism to be above reproach, so much the worse for epistemic internalism. However, I argue that epistemic internalism, properly understood, remains substantially unaffected no matter which view of content turns out to be correct. What is key to the New Evil Genius thought experiment is that, given everything of which the inhabitants are (...) consciously aware, the two worlds are subjectively indistinguishable for them, which is what matters on internalist accounts of epistemic justification. I argue that even if a standard moral of the New Evil Genius intuition is untenable due to considerations arising from content externalism, the case can be understood as supporting epistemic internalism in a way that is wholly compatible with content externalism. In short, epistemic internalism is committed to sameness of justificatory status between subjectively indistinguishable counterparts, not sameness of content of their justifiers. (shrink)

Vice epistemology studies the qualities of individuals and collectives that undermine the creation, sharing, and storing of knowledge. There is no settled understanding of which epistemic vices exist at the collective level. Yet understanding which collective epistemic vices exist is important, both to facilitate research on the antecedents and effects of collective epistemic vice, and to advance philosophical discussions such as whether some collective epistemic vices are genuinely collective. I propose an empirical approach to identifying (...) class='Hi'>epistemic vices in corporations, analyzing a large dataset of online employee reviews. The approach has parallels to the methodology for identifying the big-five personality traits. It surfaces epistemic vices that are attributed to corporations by its own members and reduces the number of vices to the minimum required to describe differences between corporations. This approach yields a new taxonomy of epistemic vices for corporations. While two vices identified have close correlates in the existing literature, four others have not been identified at all or only in aspects. Two of these vices are ‘genuinely’ collective in the sense that they can only be attributed to collectives. (shrink)

Research shows that a high majority of parents receiving prenatal diagnosis of intellectual disability terminate pregnancy. They have reasons for rejecting a child with intellectual disabilities—these reasons are, most commonly, beliefs about quality of life for it or them. Without a negative evaluation of intellectual disability, their choice makes no sense. Disability-based abortion has been critiqued through virtue ethics for being inconsistent with admirable moral character. Parental selectivity conflicts with the virtue of acceptingness and exhibits the vice of wilfulness. In (...) this paper I claim that, beyond failures of moral virtue, disability abortion often involves failures of epistemic virtue on the part of parents. I argue two things: parents believe something false, or at least contested, about life with intellectual disability—and they do so because they are not epistemically conscientious. I first explain why a central motivation for disability abortion—that it prevents harm to the child—is mistaken. I next give a brief account of intellectual virtue and culpable ignorance. I then indicate why many parents fail to be intellectually virtuous when choosing to terminate pregnancy. I focus on elimination of intellectual disability and have little to say about physical and sensory impairments. (shrink)

Socially extended knowledge has recently received much attention in mainstream epistemology. Knowledge here is not to be understood as wholly realised within a single individual who manipulates artefacts or tools but as collaboratively realised across plural agents. Because of its focus on the interpersonal dimension, socially extended epistemology appears to be a promising approach for investigating the deeply social nature of epistemic practices. I believe, however, that this line of inquiry could be made more fruitful if it is connected (...) with the critical notion of epistemic responsibility, as developed in feminist responsibilism. According to feminist responsibilists, at the core of epistemic responsibility is a critical disposition toward correcting epistemic injustice. This epistemic idea is highly relevant to the epistemological context of illness, where patient testimony is often disregarded. Hence, though restricted to the epistemological context of the experience of illness, this chapter delves into epistemic injustice and its robust mechanisms. I thus explore what responsible epistemic practices should involve in order to redress that injustice and how epistemic responsibility should be socially extended. The discussion proceeds as follows. First, by relying on Arthur Frank’s innovative work on illness narratives, I focus on chaotic bodily messages from patients overwhelmed by suffering and then explain why these messages should count as genuine narratives or testimonies despite their inarticulateness. Second, I elaborate on how epistemic injustice concerning such narratives (i.e., chaos narratives) is produced and reproduced, in particular how both a dominant sociocultural norm and our inherent vulnerability can contribute to its production and reproduction. Finally, I propose an extended form of epistemic responsibility that ameliorates this aspect. Laying particular emphasis on the epistemic role of mature empathy, I characterise the extended epistemic responsibility in terms of extended empathic knowledge. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to argue against what I call “epistemic” pessimism about moral testimony. Epistemic pessimists argue that moral testimony fails to transmit epistemic warrant as non-moral testimony does. I reject epistemic pessimism by defending theNo Difference Thesis, that there is no in principle difference between the transmission of epistemic warrant by moral and non-moral testimony. The main thrust of my argument is that there is a goodprima faciecase to be made for (...) the thesis, namely, that it is supported by all of the major current epistemological views of testimonial warrant, both reductionist and non-reductionist. After making this case, I consider five pessimist attempts to undermine theNo Difference Thesis, and argue that none of these attempts succeeds. So, in the absence of any other compelling criticisms, we are justified in rejecting epistemic pessimism and accepting theNo Difference Thesis. (shrink)

Courts have determined that adaptive management does not satisfy the Endangered Species Act's requirement to use the ‘best available science’. This is due, in part, to the failure to recognise the role of non-epistemic values in science. We examine the role of values in the legal controversy over the scientific reports and adaptive management plans for endangered salmon in the Columbia River Basin. To do this, we employ philosophical concepts related to risk and uncertainty that demonstrate how non-epistemic (...) values are internal to science. We describe how, because adaptive management is a method for dealing with inductive risk, by remaining flexible, responsive and adaptive in those circumstances where the costs of making a mistake are very high, it requires special attention to ensure that it remains useful. We conclude that, because non-epistemic values will inevitably influence the ‘best available science’, it is critical that they are clarified in any adaptive management planning so that we can ensure the salmon conservation that the ESA mandates. Fortunately, because adaptive management is iterative in nature and includes opportunities for engagement between policymakers and scientists, it enables clarification of non-epistemic values through making standards of evidence transparent, acknowledging aims and goals and dealing with uncertainty at the institutional level. (shrink)

The properties of the ${\forall^{1}}$ quantifier defined by Kontinen and Väänänen in [13] are studied, and its definition is generalized to that of a family of quantifiers ${\forall^{n}}$ . Furthermore, some epistemic operators δ n for Dependence Logic are also introduced, and the relationship between these ${\forall^{n}}$ quantifiers and the δ n operators are investigated.The Game Theoretic Semantics for Dependence Logic and the corresponding Ehrenfeucht- Fraissé game are then adapted to these new connectives.Finally, it is proved that the ${\forall^{1}}$ (...) quantifier is not uniformly definable in Dependence Logic, thus answering a question posed by Kontinen and Väänänen in the above mentioned paper. (shrink)

An encyclopedic article on epistemic supervenience in Blackwell companion to epistemology, 2 ed.

The paper concentrates on how the acceptance of radical naturalism in Quine’s theory of meaning escorts Quine to ponder the naturalized epistemology. W.V. Quine was fascinated by the evidential acquisition of scientific knowledge, and language as a vehicle of knowledge plays a significant role in his regimented naturalistic theory anchored in the scientific framework. My point is that there is an interesting shift from epistemology to language (semantic externalism). The rejection of the mentalist approach on meaning vindicates external that somehow (...) pave the way for ‘semantic holism’, a thesis where the meaning of a sentence is defined in turns to the totality of nodes and paths of its semantic networks where the meaning of linguistic units depend upon the meaning of the entire language. I would like to relook on Quine’s heart-throbbing claim about the co-extensiveness of the sentential relation and the evidential relation that point towards an affirmation of meaning holism and semantic externalism. Besides, the knowledge of acquaintance that relinquishes the singular thought from the account of psychological consideration and self-knowledge hypothesis copes up with the testimonial and warrant knowledge entangling by the claims of social knowledge as anticipated by Alvin Goldman. My conclusion would be nearer to the stance of semantic externalism inculcated by the social knowledge (in an epistemic sense) and semantic holism. (shrink)