In ethics, it is commonly supposed that we have both positive duties and negative duties, things we ought to do and things we ought not to do. Given the many parallels between ethics and epistemology, we might suppose that the same is true in epistemology, and that we have both positive epistemic duties and negative epistemic duties. I argue that this is false; that is, that we have negative epistemic duties, (...) but no positive ones. There are things that we ought not to believe, but there is nothing that we ought to believe, on purely epistemic grounds. I also consider why the parallels between ethics and epistemology break down at this particular point, suggesting that it is due to what I call the infinite justificational ‘fecundity’ of perceptual and propositional evidence. (shrink)

Many epistemologists agree that there are things we epistemically shouldn’t believe, i.e., that we have negative epistemic duties. But it is a matter of controversy whether we have any positive epistemic duties, i.e., whether we epistemically should have certain beliefs. In this paper, I argue that, in certain cases in which one acquires counterevidence against what one believes (p), one epistemically should give up one's belief by reasoning in a way that involves forming a belief (...) in its negation (in not-p). In these cases, one epistemically should believe not-p and thus has a positive epistemic duty. I reinforce this argument by showing how our negative epistemic duties depend on our facts about how we should reason. I go on to argue for positive epistemic duties in other cases, including ones in which one trying to make up one’s mind. (shrink)

Mark Nelson argues that we have no positive epistemic duties. His case rests on the evidential inexhaustibility of sensory and propositional evidence—what he calls their ‘infinite justificational fecundity’. It is argued here that Nelson’s reflections on the richness of sensory and propositional evidence do make it doubtful that we ever have an epistemic duty to add any particular beliefs to our belief set, but that they fail to establish that we have no positive epistemic (...) duties whatsoever. A theory of epistemic obligation based on Kant’s idea of an imperfect duty is outlined. It is suggested that such a theory is consistent with the inexhaustibility of sensory and propositional evidence. Finally, one feature of our epistemic practice suggestive of the existence of imperfect epistemic duties is identified and promoted. (shrink)

ABSTRACT What, if anything, should we do when someone says they don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change? Or that they worry that a COVID-19 vaccine might be dangerous? We argue that in general, we face an epistemic duty to object to such assertions, qua instances of science denial and science sceptical discourse, respectively. Our argument builds on recent discussions in social epistemology, specifically surrounding the idea that we ought to speak up against (epistemically) problematic assertions so as to fulfil (...) an important epistemic obligation – namely, preventing epistemic harms in others. We show that both science denial (SD) and vaccine hesitant (VH) discourses are harmful in a distinctively epistemic sense, and as such generate an especially strong duty to voice our disagreement. As we also argue, this obligation is nonetheless defeasible: depending on the situational features of those involved, voicing an objection to VH discourse may actually end up doing more harm than good. We conclude by tracing what seems like a promising path towards restoring well-placed public trust in scientific testifiers. Doing so is key in order to guarantee equitable access to warranted beliefs about important subject matters, such as the safety of vaccines, to all segments of society. (shrink)

There are arguably moral, legal, and prudential constraints on behavior. But are there epistemic constraints on belief? Are there any requirements arising from intellectual considerations alone? This volume includes original essays written by top epistemologists that address this and closely related questions from a variety of new, sometimes unexpected, angles. It features a wide variety of positions, ranging from arguments for and against the existence of purely epistemic requirements, reductions of epistemic requirements to moral or prudential requirements, (...) the biological foundations of epistemic requirements, extensions of the scope of epistemic requirements to include such things as open- mindedness, eradication of implicit bias and interpersonal duties to object, to new applications such as epistemic requirements pertaining to storytelling, testimony, and fundamentalist beliefs. Anyone interested in the nature of responsibility, belief, or epistemic normativity will fi nd a range of useful arguments and fresh ideas in this cutting- edge anthology. (shrink)

In response to widespread voter ignorance, Jason Brennan argues for a voting ethics that can be summarized as one negative duty: do not vote badly. The implication that abstaining is always permissible entails no incentive for citizens to become competent voters or to vote once competent. Following the Condorcet Jury Theorem, this can lead to suboptimal outcomes, suggesting that voter turnout should concern instrumentalist epistemic accounts of democratic legitimacy. This could be addressed by adding two positive voting (...) class='Hi'>duties: to make an effort to become a competent voter; and, once competent, to vote. (shrink)

There are two central kinds of epistemological mistakes: believing things you shouldn’t, and failing to believe things that you should. The knowledge-first program offers a canonical explanation for the former: if you believe something without knowing it, you violate the norm to believe only that which you know. But the explanation does not extend in any plausible way to a story about what’s wrong with suspending judgment when one ought to believe. In this paper I explore prospects for a knowledge-centering (...) account of positive epistemic norms that describe epistemic duties to believe. (shrink)

The debate between externalists and internalists in epistemology can be viewed as a disagreement about whether there are epistemic rights without corresponding duties or obligations. Taking an epistemic right to believe P as an authorization to not only accept P as true but to use P as a positive reason for accepting other propositions, the debate is about whether there are unjustified justifiers. It is about whether there are propositions that provide for others what nothing need (...) provide for them—viz., reasons for thinking them true. (shrink)

Victims of injustice are prominent protagonists in efforts to resist injustice. I argue that they have a duty to do so. Extant accounts of victims’ duties primarily cast these duties as self-regarding duties or duties based on collective identities and commitments. I provide an account of victims’ duties to resist injustice that is grounded in the duty to assist. I argue that victims are epistemically privileged with respect to injustice and are therefore uniquely positioned to (...) assist fellow victims. Primarily, they discharge this duty through testimony: victims alert other actors to the need for assistance and initiate and coordinate resistance efforts. I briefly provide an account of oppression that ranges from persecution to structural injustice. Through the examples of torture and ‘manterrupting’, I illustrate the duty and its limits. I outline shortcomings in victims’ epistemic privilege and explore means by which these can be overcome. I respond to objections from demandingness and fairness, arguing that victims have an essential, albeit circumscribed, role to play in defeating injustice. (shrink)

The following is an advertisement for scalar epistemic consequentialism. Benefits include an epistemic consequentialism that (i) is immune from the the no-positive-epistemic-duties objection and (ii) doesn’t require bullet-biting on the rightness of epistemic tradeoffs. The advertisement invites readers to think more carefully about both the definition and logical space of epistemic consequentialism.

In this paper we distinguish between epistemic dilemmas, epistemic quasi-dilemmas, and quasi epistemic dilemmas. Our starting point is the commonsense position that S faces a genuine dilemma only when S must take one of two paths and both are bad. It’s the “must” that we think is key. Moral dilemmas arise because there are cases where S must perform A and S must perform B—where ‘must’ implies a moral duty—but S cannot do both. In such a situation, (...) S is doomed to violate a moral obligation. Analogously, S face’s a genuine epistemic dilemma only if she has an epistemic duty to believe that p and at the same time an epistemic duty to not believe that p (either because she has a duty to believe ~p or a duty to suspend judgment). We argue that such cases never arise because there is no epistemic duty to adopt a particular doxastic attitude towards any particular proposition (ever). Hence, there are no epistemic dilemmas. Nevertheless, one might suppose there are situations in which one’s evidence pulls in different directions without determining a uniquely justified doxastic attitude. Such epistemic quasi-dilemmas aren’t full-fledged dilemmas, but they are arguably close enough to pose a genuine problem for the believer. But we argue that there are no genuine epistemic quasi-dilemmas either: They are all resolvable in principle. Fans of dissonance will not be totally disappointed, however, since we argue that there may well be quasi-epistemic dilemmas. These are genuinely unwinnable situations in which one’s moral or pragmatic obligations to do epistemically-relevant things make incompatible demands. (shrink)

We expand on Della Croce’s ambition to interpret “epistemic injustice” as a specification of non-maleficence in the use of the influential four-principle framework. This is an alluring line of thought for conceptual, moral, and heuristic reasons. Although it is commendable, Della Croce’s attempt remains tentative. So does our critique of it. Yet, we take on the challenge to critically address two interrelated points. First, we broaden the analysis to include deliberations about hermeneutical injustice. We argue that, if due consideration (...) of epistemic injustice is to require more than negative ethical obligations in medicine, dimensions of hermeneutical injustice should be explored as an avenue to arrive at such positive duties. Second, and relatedly, we argue that this may encompass moral responsibilities beyond the individual level, that is: positive obligations to take action on a structural level. Building on Dotson’s concept of “contributory injustice” and Scheman’s concept of “perceptual autonomy,” we suggest that the virtues of testimonial and hermeneutical justice may provide additional content not only to negative prohibitions of action (i.e. non-maleficence) but also to positive requirements of action, like respecting patient autonomy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the representational theory of perception, on which the world is represented as being a certain way in perceptual experience, cannot explain how there can be a genuinely epistemic connection between experience and belief. I try to show that we are positively required to deny that perceptual consciousness is contentful if we want to make its fitness for epistemic duties intelligible. (So versions of the representational theory on which experience has a merely (...) causal purchase on belief are not considered.) But my aim is not just negative. I try to defeat representationalism in such a way as to motivate a robustly presentational theory of perception. According to such a theory, perceptions are relations not between a subject and a content but between a subject and an ordinary object (such that if the relation holds at t, an appropriate subject and object must exist at t, and the object must be presented to the subject). I end by sketching an account of perceptual experience that is meant to show that, contrary to a very popular misconception, there is a way to conceive perceptual consciousness as relational and presentational (not intentional and representational) that does not succumb to the celebrated ?myth of the Given? (shrink)

This paper concentrates on a particular sort of case where it’s plausible that epistemic requirements can conflict: cases where an agent’s higher-order evidence supports doubting her reliability in reacting to her ordinary evidence. Conflicting epistemic requirements can be seen as generating epistemic dilemmas. The paper examines two ways that people have sought to recognize conflicting requirements without allowing them to generate epistemic dilemmas: separating epistemic norms into two different varieties, and positing rational indeterminacy in cases (...) where principles conflict. It argues that these views incur costs, and that the sense in which they avoid dilemmas does not gain them an advantage over a view that simply recognizes dilemmas as a natural outgrowth of agents’ rational reflection on their own thinking. (shrink)

I offer a detailed discussion of the connections Lani Watson posits in her book The Right to Know between violations of a person’s epistemic rights on the one hand and the distinctively epistemic forms of injustice influentially discussed in the work of Miranda Fricker on the other. I argue that if we specify the content of the relevant epistemic rights (and the corresponding duties of others) carefully enough, it becomes plausible that there is an even tighter (...) relationship between violations of these rights and various epistemic injustices than Watson claims. I close by tabling a speculative suggestion on the significance of this conclusion. (shrink)

An evidentialist can be extreme about epistemic requirements in a couple of different ways. At the reductionist end of the spectrum are those who think our epistemic obligations are fully satisfied by the mere having of evidential fit—where having implies nothing about doing. Your beliefs ought to align with your evidence, in other words, but there’s nothing you’re obligated to do in order to get yourself into the epistemically optimal position. At the expansionist end of the spectrum are (...) those who think we ought to do more—epistemically-speaking—than just bring about a state of evidential fit. We ought to get more evidence, for instance, if it’s somehow relevant to our beliefs. Rather leery of extremists, we prefer a moderate account of epistemic obligation. It’s a conjunction of three theses: (1) We never have an epistemic duty to believe any particular proposition; (2) We’re epistemically obligated to reflect on our evidence in order to produce a state of evidential fit; (3) We’re never epistemically obligated to acquire any additional evidence. Our aim is to make these plausible. (shrink)

According to an intuition highly popular in Western world, beliefs, includ-ing religious beliefs, must be supported by sufficient evidence in order to be held in a rational (or justified) way (evidentialism). Plantinga for-mulates his own view about the rationality of religious beliefs, which he considers as opposite to the traditional view. The central thesis of his position is that religious beliefs are perfectly rational when believed in the basic way, that is without any evidence or argument and even with-out the (...) use of natural reason at all. According to Plantinga people could have acquired their religious beliefs via extraordinary cognitive faculty, which he calls, after Calvin, sensus divinitatis. In this paper I ask a ques-tion whether Plantinga successfully rejects traditional intuition about the need of natural reason for religious beliefs. For this purpose, I first refer to Plantinga’s understanding of the traditional concept of the rationality of religious beliefs. I then summarize Plantinga’s views on the third condi-tion of knowledge and his account of the rationality of religious beliefs. Next, I turn to the critical part of the article. I point out the inadequacy of Plantinga’s position. To do so I first analyze and criticize Plantinga’s argument for the view that possessing sufficient evidence for religious beliefs is not an epistemic duty. I argue that Plantinga rejects only one understanding of that requirement and this is not enough to reject the whole idea of evidentialism. Then, I criticize Plantinga’s position on the third condition of knowledge, which he calls warrant. To this end I recall Laurence BonJour’s argument against externalism, since my critique of Plantinga’s position is analogous to BonJour’s argument. If my critique is successful then it is not that religious belief could be held in rational way without the use of natural reason, because in this case subject would be epistemically irresponsible. (shrink)

David Basinger has defended his position on the epistemology of religious diversity against a critique I wrote of it in this journal. Basinger endorses the principle that in the face of pervasive epistemic peer conflict a person has a prima facie duty to try to adjudicate the conflict. He defends this position against my claim that religious belief can be non-culpably “rock bottom” and thus escape “Basinger’s Rule.” Here I show why Basinger’s defense against my critique is not satisfactory, (...) and I argue against accepting Basinger’s Rule. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The testimonies of celebrities affect the lives of their many followers who pay attention to what they say. This gives celebrities a high degree of epistemic power, which has come under scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper investigates the duties that arise from this power. We argue that celebrities have a negative duty of testimonial justice not to undermine trust in authoritative sources by spreading misinformation or directing attention to untrustworthy sources. Moreover, celebrities have a general (...) imperfect duty to try to correct for an unjust distribution of attention by redirecting it to those who deserve it. During a pandemic this may become a perfect one, due to the harm that could be prevented if people follow the advice of experts. Relatedly, we argue that celebrities have an imperfect duty to promote behavior that will reduce the spread of a pandemic. We outline three ways they might do so: they might take on the position of a role model, they may act as a salience magnet or they can direct people’s attention towards others who have taken on these roles. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate whether there are any cases in which it is rational for a person to hold inconsistent beliefs and, if there are, just what implications this might have for the theory of epistemic justification. A number of issues will crop up along the way – including the relation between justification and rationality, the nature of defeat, the possibility of epistemic dilemmas, the importance of positive epistemic duties, and the distinction between transitional (...) and terminal attitudes. (shrink)

This paper defends a coherentist approach to moral epistemology. In “The Immorality of Eating Meat”, I offer a coherentist consistency argument to show that our own beliefs rationally commit us to the immorality of eating meat. Elsewhere, I use our own beliefs as premises to argue that we have positive duties to assist the poor and to argue that biomedical animal experimentation is wrong. The present paper explores whether this consistency-based coherentist approach of grounding particular moral judgments on (...) beliefs we already hold, with no appeal to moral theory, is a legitimate way of doing practical ethics. I argue that grounding particular moral judgments on our core moral convictions and other core nonmoral beliefs is a legitimate way to justify moral judgments, that these moral judgments possess as much epistemic justification and have as much claim to objectivity as moral judgments grounded on particular ethical theories, and that this internalistic coherentist method of grounding moral judgments is more likely to result in behavioral guidance than traditional theory-based approaches to practical ethics. By way of illustrating the approach, I briefly recapitulate my consistency-based argument for ethical vegetarianism. I then defend the coherentist approach implicit in the argument against a number of potentially fatal metatheoretical attacks. (shrink)

This article develops and defends a full account of the nature and normativity of resistance to evidence, according to which resistance to evidence is an instance of input-level epistemic malfunctioning. At the core of this epistemic normative picture lies the notion of knowledge indicators, as evidential probability increasing facts that one is in a position to know; resistance to evidence is construed as a failure to uptake knowledge indicators.

Objectivism is the view that how an agent ought to act depends on all kinds of facts, regardless of the agent’s epistemic position with respect to them. One of the most important challenges to this view is constituted by certain cases involving specific conditions of uncertainty—so-called three-options cases. In these cases it seems overwhelmingly plausible that an agent ought to do what is recommendable given her limited perspective, even though the agent knows that this is not objectively the best (...) course of action. The standard objectivist response to this challenge relies on a distinction between what one ought to do and what would be blameworthy or unreasonable to do. This response is affected by several problems. In this paper I introduce and defend an alternative objectivist response to the challenge. My proposal admits that in the relevant cases the agent ought to do what is recommendable given her perspective, but maintains that this diagnosis of the cases is fully compatible with objectivism. I argue that this proposal has several advantages over alternative accounts of the cases. (shrink)

The paper defends the thesis that our epistemic duty is the duty to proportion our beliefs to the evidence we possess. An inclusive view of evidence possessed is put forward on the grounds that it makes sense of our intuitions about when it is right to say that a person ought to believe some proposition P. A second thesis is that we have no epistemic duty to adopt any particular doxastic attitudes. The apparent tension between the two theses (...) is resolved by applying the concept of duty to belief indirectly. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the possibility that a ‘contented religious exclusivist’, will be fully rational and not neglectful of any of her epistemic duties when faced with the world’s religious diversity. I present an epistemic strategy for reflecting on one's beliefs and then present two features of religious belief that make contented exclusivism a rational possibility. I then argue against the positions of John Hick, David Basinger, and Steven Wykstra on contented exclusivism, and criticize an overly (...) optimistic conception of rationality. Finally, I describe a contented exclusivist who might very well not be fully rational in the face of religious diversity. (shrink)

The literature on the epistemology of ignorance already discusses how certain forms of discrimination, such as racism and sexism, are perpetuated by the ignorance of individuals and groups. However, little attention has been given to how speciesism—a form of discrimination on the basis of species membership—is sustained through ignorance_._ Of the few animal ethicists who explicitly discuss ignorance, none have related this concept to speciesism as a form of discrimination. However, it is crucial to explore this connection, I argue, as (...) ignorance is both an integral part of the injustice done to animals as well as an obstacle to improving their treatment. In order to adequately criticize sustained structural speciesism and injustices towards animals, I develop an epistemological account of ‘speciesist ignorance’. I begin by defining and distinguishing between individual and group-based accounts of speciesist ignorance. I argue that humans, taken as a group, enjoy a position of privilege, which allows them to comfortably remain ignorant of their participation in collective wrongdoings towards animals. Additionally, I point out that speciesist ignorance is structurally encouraged and thereby maintains the dominant view that the human-animal-relationship, as it stands, is just. In sum, this article lays the groundwork for a social epistemology of speciesist ignorance. In particular, it informs further debate about individual and institutional epistemic duties to inquire into speciesism and to inform the public, about the moral culpability of ignorant actions, and about effective animal advocacy and policy which actively rejects speciesist ignorance. (shrink)

Rationality is intrapersonally permissive just in case there are multiple doxastic states that one agent may be rational in holding at a given time, given some body of evidence. One way for intrapersonal permissivism to be true is if there are epistemic supererogatory beliefs—beliefs that go beyond the call of epistemic duty. Despite this, there has been almost no discussion of epistemic supererogation in the permissivism literature. This paper shows that this is a mistake. It does this (...) by arguing that the most popular ways of responding to one of the major obstacles to any intrapersonally permissive all fall prey to the same problem. This problem is most naturally solved by positing a category of epistemically supererogatory belief. So intrapersonal epistemic permissivists should embrace epistemic supererogation. (shrink)

Chase Wrenn argues that there are no epistemic duties. When it appears that we have an epistemic duty to believe, disbelieve or suspend judgement about some proposition P, we are really under a moral obligation to adopt the attitude towards P that our evidence favours. The argument appeals to theoretical parsimony: our conceptual scheme will be simpler without epistemic duties and we should therefore drop them. I argue that Wrenn’s strategy is flawed. There may well (...) be things that we ought to do on epistemic grounds alone. (shrink)

An epistemic duty would be a duty to believe, disbelieve, or withhold judgment from a proposition, and it would be grounded in purely evidential or epistemic considerations. If I promise to believe it is raining, my duty to believe is not epistemic. If my evidence is so good that, in light of it alone, I ought to believe it is raining, then my duty to believe supposedly is epistemic. I offer a new argument for the claim (...) that there are no epistemic duties. Though people do sometimes have duties to believe, disbelieve, or withhold judgment from propositions, those duties are never grounded in purely epistemic considerations. (shrink)

In this chapter, we explore whether agents have an epistemic duty to eradicate implicit bias. Recent research shows that implicit biases are widespread and they have a wide variety of epistemic effects on our doxastic attitudes. First, we offer some examples and features of implicit biases. Second, we clarify what it means to have an epistemic duty, and discuss the kind of epistemic duties we might have regarding implicit bias. Third, we argue that we have (...) an epistemic duty to eradicate implicit biases that have negative epistemic impact. Finally, we defend this view against the objection that we lack the relevant control over implicit bias that’s required for such a duty. We argue that we have a kind of reflective control over the implicit biases that we are duty-bound to eradicate. And since, as we show, we have this control over a wide variety of implicit biases, there are a lot of implicit biases that we have epistemic duties to eradicate. (shrink)

In order to examine the relationship between warrant and justification, I turn, in this chapter, to the views of Roderick Chisholm, or, more precisely, to the classical Chisholm. In important respects, the classical Chisholm's internalism displays much continuity with the deontological internalism of Descartes and Locke. The classical Chisholm's official position on warrant is that warrant is a matter of fulfilling epistemic obligation – a matter of a proposition's being so related to a person that he can better fulfill (...) his epistemic duty by accepting the proposition in question than by, e.g., withholding acceptance. Against Chisholm, I argue that most of Chisholm's epistemic principles are false if warrant is what Chisholm officially says it is, and that the fulfillment of epistemic duty is neither sufficient nor necessary for warrant. (shrink)

Acceptability is a thoroughly normative epistemic notion. If a statement is acceptable, i.e. it is proper to take it as a premise, then one is justified in accepting it. We also hold that a statement is acceptable just in case there is a presumption of warrant in its favor. We thus see acceptability connected to epistemic normativity on the one hand and to warrant on the other. But there is a distinct tension in this dual connection. The dominant (...) tradition in modern epistemology sees epistemic justification as an internalist notion. We are justified in holding a belief just in case certain conditions are fulfilled of which we have privileged access. Warrant is an externalist notion. We have no privileged access to the conditions of warrant. Is our understanding of acceptability as both normative and definable in terms of presumption of warrant philosophically coherent? We shall argue that it is a philosophically coherent notion. Presumption of warrant, unlike warrant, is an internalist notion. Our position can be characterized as an externalist internal ism. It avoids the charge brought against externalism of allowing one to be justified in accepting some claim even if one has no evidence for it. We meet the classical internalist challenge that acceptance is normatively proper only if one has done one's epistemic duty and thus one is aware of the normative propriety of the acceptance by providing a non-deontological definition of epistemic justification, and arguing that this is still a sufficiently normative notion for acceptability. (shrink)

인식적 의무는 전통적으로 믿음에 귀속되는 의무로 이해되어 왔다. 그리고 인식적 의무의 이 특징은 인식적 의무를 다른 종류의 의무들과 구분되게 하는, 그리고 더 나아가 다른 종류의 의무들과 통약 불가능하게 하는 주된 요인의 하나로 간주되어 왔다. 그러나 인식적 의무의 믿음 귀속에 대한 최근의 비판적 논의는 인식적 의무의 독특한 지위에 대해 근본적인 물음을 던지게 한다. 이러한 맥락에서 본 논문은 인식적 의무가 고유한 종류의 의무인지 아니면 다른 종류의 의무들과 통약 가능한 의무인지 논의를 진행한다. 이를 위해 우선, 인식적 의무의 행위 귀속성을 주장하는 이주한의 견해를 간략히 (...) 살펴보고, 그러한 견해 하에서 인식적 의무의 고유성이 어떻게 옹호될 수 있는지 주요 논증을 구체적으로 검토한다. 이 논의를 통해, 실천적 이유 구분 가능성에 기대는 고유성 논증과 인식적 이유 내재성에 기대는 고유성 논증 각각의 중심 생각과 그 문제점들이 드러날 것이다. 그리고 무엇보다, 인식적 의무는 단순히 고유한 종류의 의무가 아닐뿐더러, 도덕적, 타산적, 미학적 의무 등 다양한 종류의 실천적 의무들과 통약 가능하다는 점이 적극적으로 논의될 것이다. (shrink)

Are there epistemic duties to inquire? The idea enjoys intuitive support. However, prominent evidentialists argue that our only epistemic duty is to believe well (i.e., to have doxastically justified beliefs), and doing so does not require inquiry. Against this, I argue that evidentialists are plausibly committed to the idea that if we have epistemic duties to believe well, then we have epistemic duties to inquire. This is because on plausible evidentialist views of evidence (...) possession (i.e., views that result in plausible theories of evidentialist justification), inquiry is sometimes a necessary constitutive means of forming doxastically justified beliefs—beliefs that are proportioned to and based on one's evidence. So, either evidentialist views of evidence possession commit them to epistemic duties to inquire or they lead to independently implausible theories of evidentialist justification. My discussion also has important implications for the zetetic turn in epistemology, since I argue that evidentialists who are staunchly opposed to epistemic norms on inquiry have reason to reconsider. (shrink)

We were slightly concerned, upon having read Eric Winsberg, Jason Brennan and Chris Surprenant’s reply to our paper “Were Lockdowns Justified? A Return to the Facts and Evidence”, that they may have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of our argument, so we issue the following clarification, along with a comment on our motivations for writing such a piece, for the interested reader.

This paper outlines and defends a moderate intuitionism. The point of departure is the intuitionism of W. D. Ross (1930) in The Right and the Good, conceived as ethically pluralist and epistemologically rationalist. The paper articulates a conception of self-evidence – including mediate as well as immediate kinds – appropriate to a moderate intuitionism, explores some of the resources and varieties of that position, and considers some problems and prospects for a rationalist version of intuitionism. The final section addresses the (...) issue of how best to conceive the nature and grounds of prima facie duty, the problem of whether intuitionism can adequately deal with conflicts of prima facie duties, and the question of how satisfactorily a moderate intuitionism can account for the epistemic status of moral judgments of overall duty and their connection with rational action. (shrink)

Epistemic injustice is a kind of injustice that arises when one’s capacity as an epistemic subject is wrongfully denied. In recent years it has been argued that psychiatric patients are often harmed in their capacity as knowers and suffer from various forms of epistemic injustice that they encounter in psychiatric services. Acknowledging that epistemic injustice is a multifaceted problem in psychiatry calls for an adequate response. In this paper I argue that, given that psychiatric patients deserve (...) epistemic respect and have a certain epistemic privilege, healthcare professionals have a pro tanto epistemic duty to attend to and/or solicit reports of patients’ first-person experiences in order to prevent epistemic losses. I discuss the nature and scope of this epistemic duty and point to one interesting consequence. In order to prevent epistemic losses, healthcare professionals may need to provide some patients with resources and tools for expressing their experiences and first-person knowledge, such as those that have been developed within the phenomenological approach. I discuss the risk of secondary testimonial and hermeneutical injustice that the practice of relying on such external tools might pose and survey some ways to mitigate it. (shrink)

믿음의 수의성에 관한 올스톤의 비판적 논의가 제시된 이래, 많은 철학자들은 적어도 직접적으로는 우리가 믿음을 제어하지 못한다는 것에 어느 정도 동의하는 듯 보인다. 그런데 믿음의 불수의성에 관한 이러한 견해는 소위 ‘당위는 가능성을 함축한다’는 원리와 더불어 인식적 규범에 관한 역설을 낳는다. 필자는 본 논문에서 이 역설에 관하여 기존의 해결책들과 근본적으로 다른 대안적 해결책을 제시한다. 이를 위해 우선, 표현 ‘믿음’이 어떠한 식으로 사용되는지 그 쓰임을 살펴보고, 이를 통해 ‘믿음’이 맥락에 따라 불수의적인 심적성향뿐 아니라 필자가 ‘인식적 수용’이라 부르는 심적 행위 또한 의미한다는 것을 드러낸다. (...) 그리고 의무론적인 인식적 규범이 귀속되는 태도는 불수의적인 심적 성향으로서의 믿음이 아니라 수의적인 심적 행위인 인식적 수용이라는 것을 논증한다. 이상의 논의를 위해, 불수의적인 심적 성향으로서의 믿음 그리고 또 다른 심적 행위인 실용적 수용과의 비교, 대조 하에서 인식적 수용이 어떠한 심적 행위인지 검토하고, 이 인식적 수용 개념을 토대로 인식적 의무에 대한 새로운 분석을 제시한다. 결국, 이상의 논의는 의무론적인 인식적 규범이 행위와 구분되는 것으로서의 믿음에 귀속되기보다는 오히려 특수한 종류의 심적 행위에 귀속되는 의무임을 드러낼 것이다. (shrink)

Partiality is the special concern that we display for ourselves and other people with whom we stand in some special personal relationship. It is a central theme in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern. Questions about the justification of partiality arise in the context of enquiry into several moral topics, including the good life and the role in it of our personal commitments; the demands of impartial morality, equality, and other moral ideals; and commonsense ideas about supererogation. This paper provides (...) an overview of the debate on the ethics of partiality through the lens of the domains of permissible and required partiality. After outlining the conceptual space, I first discuss agent-centred moral options that concern permissions not to do what would be impartially optimal. I then focus on required partiality, which concerns associative duties that go beyond our general duties to others and require us to give special priority to people who are close to us. I discuss some notable features of associative duties and the two main objections that have been raised against them: the Voluntarist and the Distributive objections. I then turn to the justification of partiality, focusing on underivative approaches and reasons-based frameworks. I discuss the reductionism and non-reductionism debate: the question whether partiality is derivative or fundamental. I survey arguments for ‘the big three’, according to which partiality is justified by appeal to the special value of either projects, personal relationships, or individuals. I conclude by discussing four newly emerging areas in the debate: normative transitions of various personal relationships, relationships with AI, epistemic partiality, and negative partiality, which concerns the negative analogue of our positive personal relationships. (shrink)

The received view says that possibility is the dual of necessity: a proposition is (metaphysically, logically, epistemically etc.) possible iff it is not the case that its negation is (metaphysically, logically, epistemically etc., respectively) necessary. This reading is usually taken for granted by modal logicians and indeed seems plausible when dealing with logical or metaphysical possibility. But what about epistemic possibility? We argue that the dual definition of epistemic possibility in terms of epistemic necessity generates tension when (...) reasoning about non-idealized agents and is a problem of concern for most hyperintensional epistemic logics that alleviate the problem of logical omniscience. The tension is particularly evident when knowledge is taken as a primitive to define other epistemic concepts, such as justification and belief, as done in the knowledge-first tradition. We propose a non-dual interpretation of epistemic possibility, employing a hyperintensionality filter similar to the one that makes the corresponding epistemic necessity operator hyperintensional. We employ the proposed semantics to model Stalnaker's belief as epistemic possibility of knowledge and provide a sound and complete axiomatization for a hyperintensional version of his bimodal logic of knowledge and belief. (shrink)

If we find life on another world, it will be an extremely important discovery and we will have to take great care not to do anything that might endanger that life. If the life we find is sentient we will have moral obligations to that life. Whether it is sentient or not, we have a duty to ourselves to preserve it as a study object, and also because it would be commonly seen as valuable in its own right. In addition (...) to this we would also have a duty to our fellow humans and other earthly life forms not to expose them to danger by advertently or inadvertently exposing them to potentially harmful space organisms. When space exploration turns into exploitation it will therefore be important to be able to show that a world that is up for exploitation is uninhabited before the exploitation starts. Showing that a world is uninhabited is, however, a different kind of task than showing that it is inhabited. The latter task can be accomplished through one positive finding but it is not clear how to go about the former task. In this paper I suggest that it is a gradual process asymptotically approaching certainty rather than a discovery in the traditional sense of the word. It has to be handled in two steps. The first is to connect degree of certainty with research setup. The second is to decide how certain we need to be. The first step is about the number, diversity and quality of observations. The second step is a decision we have to make based on the purpose of the investigation. The purpose and therefore the degree of certainty needed to establish that a world is uninhabited will be different for a world that is up for exploitation than for a world that is not. In the latter case it is only a matter of epistemic values. In the former case also ethical values have to be considered. (shrink)

Dworkin claimed that hypothetical agreements are not binding and, thus, that the argument from the Original Position in Rawls’ A Theory of Justice does not justify or ground the principles of justice. I argue that the Original Position is neither foundational nor in need of a “deep theory”, as claims Dworkin; it is only a means of clarification, a sort of “perspicuous representation” of our judgments concerning justice. I also argue that the natural duty of justice works as a non-hypothetical (...) justification for why the principles are binding. This because the natural duty of justice does not depend on agreements to hold and, as such, makes any principle of justice binding. (shrink)

While it is commonly accepted that corporations have negative duties to respect human rights, the question of whether rights also imply positive duties for corporations is contentious. The recent reports of the United Nations special representative on business and human rights contend that corporations do not have positive duties, but the arguments this is based on are flawed from an ethical point of view. In particular, the reports fail to consider the implications of interactions between (...) corporations and states. For rights to be secured, corporations may face duties to use their power to pressure governments into performing their assigned duties, and duties not to undermine the role of the government. The interaction of corporations and governments also has implications for choosing effective instruments to advance human rights. International initiatives that do not take this interaction into account will be ineffective or, at worst, counterproductive. (shrink)

Can anti-deportation resistance be justified, and if so how and by whom may, or perhaps should, unjust deportations be resisted? In this paper, I seek to provide an answer to these questions. The paper starts by describing the main forms and agents of anti-deportation action in the contemporary context. Subsequently, I examine how different justifications for principled resistance and disobedience may each be invoked in the case of deportation resistance. I then explore how worries about the resister’s motivation for engaging (...) in the action and their epistemic position apply in the specific context of anti-deportation action and consider in what circumstances there is not merely a right but a duty to resist deportation. The upshot of this argument, I conclude, is that the liberal state ought to respond to anti-deportation action not by criminalising disobedience and resistance in this field, but rather by creating legal avenues for such actors to influence deportation decision-making. DOI 10.17879/95189423213. (shrink)

In intersystemic cases, a court applies the law of a foreign system. Scholars have argued that the court ought to use the interpretive methodology of the foreign system’s courts. I argue against that intuitive position. First, interpretive methodology is not bound up with primary rights and duties such that it constitutes substantive law for conflict of laws purposes. Second, although interpretive methodology has epistemic value and may affect case outcomes, a given methodology might not have the same (...) class='Hi'>epistemic value or the same effect on outcomes for differently situated interpreters. Further, the approach that the foreign judges take to interpreting their own law is necessarily anchored to the foreign system’s rule of recognition, which is not true of the approach of external judges. Descriptive facts might align such that external interpreters would have to use the internal methodology to identify the applicable law, but that’s an empirical question the answer to which will vary from case to case. (shrink)