Are Epistemic Norms Fundamentally Social Norms?

Abstract

AbstractPeople develop and deploy epistemic norms – normative sensibilities in light of which they regulate both their individual and community epistemic practice. There is a similarity to folk's epistemic normative sensibilities – and it is by virtue of this that folk commonly can rely on each other, and even work jointly to produce systems of true beliefs – a kind of epistemic common good. Agents not only regulate their belief forming practices in light of these sensitivities, but they make clear to others that they approve or disapprove of practices as these accord with their sensibilities – they thus regulate the belief forming practices of others in an interdependent pursuit of a good – something on the order of a community stock of true beliefs. Such general observations suggest ways in which common epistemic norms function as social norms, as these are characterized by Cristina Bicchieri's (2006) discussion of various kinds of norms. I draw on this framework – together with an important elaboration in Bicchieri (2017) – as it affords an analysis of the various related ways in which normative sensibilities function in communities of interdependent agents. The framework allows one to probe how these normative sensibilities function in the various associated choice situations. I argue that epistemic norms are fundamentally social norms, and, at the same time, they also are widely shared sensibilities about state-of-the-art ways of pursuing projects of individual veritistic value. The two foundations suggest the analogy of an arch.