Abstract
Many recent philosophers have been tempted by epistemic partialism. They hold that epistemic norms and those of friendship constitutively conflict. In this paper, I suggest that underpinning this claim is the assumption that friendship is not an epistemically rich state, an assumption that even opponents of epistemic partiality have not questioned. I argue that there is good reason to question this assumption, and instead regard friendship as essentially involving knowledge of the other. If we accept this account of friendship, the possibility of epistemic partialism does not arise.
Highlights
In the recent literature on friendship, various ‘epistemic partialists’ have suggested that there are important norms that conflict with epistemic norms
The suggestion has been that norms deriving from valuable relationships such as friendship sometimes demand things that conflict with epistemic demands on us
1 I noted that epistemic partiality has sometimes been motivated by an overarching conception of friendship
Summary
Humans are subject to various different kinds of norm: epistemic norms, prudential norms, moral norms, and social norms, for example. The controversial claim made by epistemic partialists is that there is inherent or constitutive conflict between the norms of friendship and epistemology Their claim is that being a good friend is partially constituted by forming positive beliefs about one’s friends or by adopting belief-forming strategies that are likely to lead to such positive beliefs.. The suggestion is that it is a norm of friendship, inherent to friendship itself, that one believe good things about one’s friends, or be disposed to form such beliefs. This, she suggests, is the case because they are one’s friends rather than because there is some epistemic explanation available (such as that one is likely to know one’s friends well and have plenty of evidence about their good qualities). Despite the fact that all of the evidence available to Eric points strongly towards the conclusion that the poetry will be bad, Keller thinks that as a friend Eric ought not to believe that Rebecca’s poetry will be bad. Stroud suggests that friendship gives us reason to disbelieve plausible testimony about the ethically bad behaviour of our friends, even if the friendship does not provide evidence for the falsity of the testimony
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