Abstract

After a reflection on my personal experiences with shame for not having information about my family's struggles after I left for graduate studies, I argue that this experience of shame can be understood to be one of epistemic shame. I sketch a short rationale for this claim. I briefly summarize very recent work on epistemic shame careful to highlight two components of it: 1) this affective state relates to a belief that one holds and 2) the intensity of an experience of epistemic shame is a function of the judgements other people make about one for holding a false belief. I suggest that the above experience of epistemic shame I described is some motivation to extend this current understanding.