Epistemic Norms Research Articles

Epistemic norms: truth conducive enough

Epistemology needs to account for the success of science. In True Enough (2017), Catherine Elgin argues that a veritist epistemology is inadequate to this task. She advocates shifting epistemology’s focus away from true belief and toward understanding, and further, jettisoning truth from its privileged place in epistemological theorizing. Pace Elgin, I argue that epistemology’s accommodation of science does not require rejecting truth as the central epistemic value. Instead, it requires understanding veritism in an ecumenical way that acknowledges a rich array of truth-oriented values. In place of veritism, Elgin offers a holistic epistemology that takes epistemic norms to have their genesis in our collective practice of deliberation. The acceptability of epistemic norms turns on epistemic responsibility, as opposed to reliability, and truth-conduciveness is rejected as the standard of evaluation for arguments and methods of inquiry. I argue, by way of an extended discussion of a high-profile and controversial criminal case, that this leaves epistemic practices and their products inadequately grounded. I offer an alternative, veritistic account of epistemic norms that retains a modified version of truth-conduciveness as a standard of evaluation. However, my alternative account of epistemic norms is congenial to Elgin’s holistic epistemology, and, I suggest, could be incorporated within it.

Doxastic Deontology and Cognitive Competence

The paper challenges William Alston’s argument against doxastic deontology, the view that we have epistemic duties concerning our beliefs. The core of the argument is that doxastic deontology requires voluntary control over our beliefs, which we do not have. The idea that doxastic deontology requires voluntary control is supposed to follow from the principle that ought implies can (OIC). The paper argues that this is wrong: in the OIC principle which regulates our doxastic duties the “can” does not stand for the ability to shape our beliefs voluntarily. As an examination of everyday examples shows, it stands for cognitive competence, the reliable ability to acquire beliefs in compliance with the epistemic norms. The doxastic OIC principle asserts, in brief, that one is only obliged to believe something if one’s cognitive capacities are sufficiently strong. It is also explained why the doxastic duties do not require voluntary control as opposed to moral duties. This understanding of doxastic duties saves our everyday doxastic deontic judgments from Alston’s argument, but does not help the deontological conception of justification, which understands justification as not violating one’s epistemic duties. It actually provides another argument against the deontological conception: if the OIC regulating our doxastic duties is construed as suggested, the deontological conception of justification implies that one’s doxastic duties and, consequently, whether one’s belief is justified depend on one’s cognitive competence. Since cognitive competence varies from person to person, justification will not matter to truth and knowledge in the way epistemic justification is supposed to do.

The ethics of deliberative activism: in search of reasonableness and dialogic responsiveness in provocative art exhibitions

ABSTRACT“Deliberative activism” refers to the integration of two ideals of citizen participation: deliberation and activism. While there are strong arguments for bridging the gap between the two ideals, it is equally important to keep what is distinct about deliberative activism because all activism is not (and presumably should not aspire to be) deliberative. In this article, we claim that there are certain ethical and epistemic norms of deliberation that can inform our understanding of “deliberative activism”, thereby help to draw the boundary between activism and deliberative activism. By looking at a particular form of activism—provocative art—that is intuitively antithetical to the deliberative ideal, we argue that simple activism can be differentiated from deliberative activism by considering to what extent activists’ adhere to principles of reasonableness and dialogic responsiveness. Using four cases of controversial, provocative art exhibitions in Sweden that challenges the boundaries of public deliberation, we conclude that that it is important to distinguish acts that initiate deliberation from those that are acts of deliberation in themselves. The distinguishing factor must be at the heart of deliberation namely an ethical commitment to dialogue. To the very least, actors must explain their claim as if they were in dialogue.

Some lessons from simulations of scientific disagreements

This paper examines lessons obtained by means of simulations in the form of agent-based models (ABMs) about the norms that are to guide disagreeing scientists. I focus on two types of epistemic and methodological norms: (i) norms that guide one’s attitude towards one’s own theory, and (ii) norms that guide one’s attitude towards the opponent’s theory. Concerning (i) I look into ABMs that have been designed to examine the context of peer disagreement. Here I challenge the conclusion that the given ABMs provide a support for the so-called Steadfast Norm, according to which one is epistemically justified in remaining steadfast in their beliefs in face of disagreeing peers. I argue that the proposed models at best provide evidence for a weaker norm, which concerns methodological steadfastness. Concerning (ii) I look into ABMs aimed at examining epistemic effects of scientific interaction. Here I argue that the models provide diverging suggestions and that the link between each ABM and the type of represented inquiry is still missing. Moreover, I examine alternative strategies of arguing in favor of the benefits of scientific interaction, relevant for contemporary discussions on scientific pluralism.

Imprecise Epistemic Values and Imprecise Credences

A number of recent arguments purport to show that imprecise credences are incompatible with accuracy-first epistemology. If correct, this conclusion suggests a conflict between evidential and alethic epistemic norms. In the first part of the paper, I claim that these arguments fail if we understand imprecise credences as indeterminate credences. In the second part, I explore why agents with entirely alethic epistemic values can end up in an indeterminate credal state. Following William James, I argue that there are many distinct alethic values that a rational agent can have. Furthermore, such an agent is rationally permitted not to have settled on one fully precise value function. This indeterminacy in value will sometimes result in indeterminacy in epistemic behaviour—that is, because the agent’s values aren’t settled, what she believes might not be.

The epistemic norm of inference and non-epistemic reasons for belief

There is an important disagreement in contemporary epistemology over the possibility of non-epistemic reasons for belief. Many epistemologists argue that non-epistemic reasons cannot be good or normative reasons for holding beliefs: non-epistemic reasons might be good reasons for a subject to bring herself to hold a belief, the argument goes, but they do not offer any normative support for the belief itself. Non-epistemic reasons, as they say, are just the wrong kind of reason for belief. Other epistemologists, however, argue that there can be cases where non-epistemic reasons directly offer normative support for the beliefs a subject holds. My aim in this paper is to remove an apparent obstacle for the view that there can be non-epistemic normative reasons for belief, by showing that the existence of non-epistemic reasons for belief does not conflict with epistemic standards for the assessment of inferences. More specifically, I aim to show that the following principles are compatible. Epistemic norm of inference (ENI): necessarily, for all subjects S and inferences I: I is a good inference for S only if S can gain a (doxastically) epistemically justified belief in I’s conclusion on the basis of I’s premises. Non-epistemic reasons for belief (NERB): possibly, for some subject S, reason R, and belief B: R is a good (i.e., normative) reason for S to hold B, and R is not an epistemic reason for B. Guidance: for all subjects S, potential reasons R, and beliefs/actions φ: In order for R to count as a normative reason for S to φ, it must be possible for S to take R into account as relevant to the determination of whether S ought to φ. One might naturally think that these principles conflict, for if there are non-epistemic reasons for belief, then they must guide deliberation, and in guiding deliberation, they would violate epistemic standards. The aim of this paper is to show that no such conflict need arise. Section 2 of the paper sets out the concept of an inference, and sketches an epistemic framework for the assessment of inferences and arguments. Section 3 sets out the distinction between normative and motivating reasons, discusses motivational internalism about reasons, and briefly defends the view that there can be non-epistemic reasons for beliefs. Section 4 shows that non-epistemic reasons for belief are compatible with epistemic standards for inference and with a deliberative guidance constraint on normative reasons, because any time a reason R is a good non-epistemic reason for a subject S to hold a belief B, there is an epistemically good inference available to S which takes R as a premise and which concludes with the meta-belief that S ought to hold B. So the paper employs an indirect level-connecting principle between normative reasons for φ-ing and epistemic reasons for believing that one ought to φ. The paper ends with clarifications of that level-connecting principle, and responses to three objections.

Epistemic norms, closure, and No-Belief hinge epistemology

Recent views in hinge epistemology rely on doxastic normativism to argue that our attitudes towards hinge propositions are not beliefs. This paper has two aims; the first is positive: it discusses the general normative credentials of this move. The second is negative: it delivers two negative results for No-Belief hinge epistemology such construed. The first concerns the motivation for the view: if we’re right, doxastic normativism offers little in the way of theoretical support for the claim that our attitudes towards hinge propositions are anything but garden-variety beliefs. The second concerns theoretical fruitfulness: we show that embracing a No-Belief view will either get us in serious theoretical trouble, or loose all anti-sceptical appeal.

Conceptual engineering for epistemic norms

ABSTRACTWhat makes an epistemic norm distinctively epistemic? According to the received view in the literature, if a norm N regulates the epistemic properties required for permissibly phi-ing, then N is an epistemic norm.This paper is involved in conceptual engineering. It has two aims: first, it argues that the received view should be abandoned, in that it fails to identify epistemic and only epistemic requirements, and it misses fit with the general normative landscape. At the same time, I argue, the failure of the received view is no reason for skepticism about ‘the epistemic’ as a sui generis normative domain.This paper’s second and central aim is an ameliorative aim: it proposes a novel approach to individuating epistemic norms. In a nutshell, according to the ameliorative proposal I will develop here, epistemic norms are to be individuated by their association with distinctively epistemic values.

Rules versus Standards: What Are the Costs of Epistemic Norms in Drug Regulation?

Over the last decade, philosophers of science have extensively criticized the epistemic superiority of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for testing safety and effectiveness of new drugs, defending instead various forms of evidential pluralism. We argue that scientific methods in regulatory decision-making cannot be assessed in epistemic terms only: there are costs involved. Drawing on the legal distinction between rules and standards, we show that drug regulation based on evidential pluralism has much higher costs than our current RCT-based system. We analyze these costs and advocate for evaluating any scheme for drug regulatory tests in terms of concrete empirical benchmarks, like the error rates of regulatory decisions.

Online romance scams and victimhood

Online romance scams defraud dating website users of large amounts of money and inflict serious psychological harm. Victims of these scams often blame themselves for their losses and are blamed by others. We consider whether victims actually do share responsibility with the scammer for their losses. Three sorts of cases are particularly relevant: (i) where there are relatively many abortive meetings and even more fruitless money transfers in a single scam; (ii) where someone is a repeat scam victim; and (iii) where the victim has been warned by authorities that they are currently a victim of a scam and pay anyway. We argue that responsibility sometimes is shared, but that losses can be out of proportion to imprudence. Scam victims sometimes violate epistemic norms, but in ways that are peculiar to romantic attachment. The paper combines the methods of qualitative psychological research on scam victims and analytic philosophy (Research for this paper was supported by Grant EP/N028112/1 from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council).

Accuracy and Credal Imprecision

AbstractMany have claimed that epistemic rationality sometimes requires us to have imprecise credal states (i.e., credal states representable only by sets of credence functions) rather than precise ones (i.e., credal states representable by single credence functions). Some writers have recently argued that this claim conflicts with accuracy‐centered epistemology, i.e., the project of justifying epistemic norms by appealing solely to the overall accuracy of the doxastic states they recommend. But these arguments are far from decisive. In this essay, we prove some new results, which show that there is little hope for reconciling the rationality of credal imprecision with accuracy‐centered epistemology.

An African Communitarian View of Epistemic Responsibility

ABSTRACTIn this article, I venture into a fairly underexplored area of African epistemic normativity. I seek to consider how the question of responsibility might be approached differently if values salient in African communitarian thinking are critically explored. I argue that while one may find almost a uniform framework for the determination of epistemic responsibility in different philosophical traditions based on the rational scheme, in the dominant African communitarian tradition, there is more to responsibility than just individualistic traits like rationality. My argument is based on the premise that, responsibility in African epistemological thinking is viewed from a communitarian perspective. According to this view, despite most of African communitarian knowledge conforming to the consciousness and control tests of the rational scheme, communitarian philosophy still remains cardinal in defining the aspect of responsibility on the part of both the individual and the community. I, therefore, partly make critical comparisons between a Western and African concept of responsibility as I seek to justify the plausibility of an African model of responsibility based on communitarian habits and culture.

Caring to Know: Response to Commentators

Caring to Know:Response to Commentators Vrinda Dalmiya (bio) It is a privilege to have such extensive engagement with one's work as in the responses of Linda Alcoff, Eva Kittay, Keya Maitra, and Nilanjan Das. I am sincerely thankful for the intellectual generosity and thoughtfulness of their critiques. Before responding to their specific concerns, however, I lay out the general argument of Caring to Know in broad strokes to serve as the common backdrop to their comments. The central idea of Caring to Know is that notions of 'knowing well' are intertwined with ideas of 'living well,' and so epistemology is linked with ethics and politics, and epistemic normativity is reconfigured to involve goodness and justice. Of course, reference to moral concepts when delineating epistemic concepts is not new. Feminists like Naomi Scheman (2001), for instance, speak of objectivity in terms of trustworthiness; Sally Haslanger claims that an epistemically valuable cognitive disposition is one "that figures in a kind of (moral, autonomous) agency that is intrinsically good" (Haslanger 2012, p. 357), and of course Miranda Fricker's (2007) influential work on epistemic injustice alerts us to how power can distort the functioning of epistemic norms of credibility and meaningfulness. In the Sanskrit Mahābhārata also, we see thirteen ethical dispositions like non-violence, [End Page 879] shame, and equanimity listed in answer to the straightforward epistemic query "What is truth? and How do we get it?" Thus, the blurring of epistemological and ethical borders by contemporary feminists is echoed in the completely different sociocultural time and context of the Classical Indian epic. The book attempts to mine the possibilities arising out of such a convergence in what can be called "comparative feminist philosophy." Of course, there are different visions of living well and of knowing well both in feminist theory and Mahābhārata interpretations. In bringing them together, Caring to Know speaks of the former in terms of care ethics and of the latter as the virtue-theoretic perspective in theory of knowledge. Consequently, the book intertwines the moral virtues of care with the intellectual virtues of truth-seeking, and such a "care-based epistemology" is said to account for politically robust forms of both caring and knowing. In the comparative framing of the project, then, the Mahābhārata's vision of living life according to Dharma must speak to issues in both care ethics and virtue epistemology, and therefore the epic can intriguingly (and arguably) contribute to a feminist care-based virtue epistemology in spite of being a patriarchal text. The claim that the Mahābhārata involves care ethics rests on an analysis of some key epic characters and its general shift from absolute non-violence (ahimsā) to the subtler virtue of non-cruelty (ānṛśaṃsya). The epic not only echoes concerns similar to that of care ethicists but complicates that perspective by highlighting uncertainty, self-reflexivity (caring about, caring), and a unique form of moral agency underlying care-ethical negotiations about how to be non-cruel. But while noting this extension, it is important to remember that care in the epic is the voice of privileged men: there is little sensitivity to oppressions and "secondary dependencies" resulting from care work that is typically assigned to those on the fringes of society and remains the focus of a feminist ethics of care. A dialogue between the Mahābhārata and contemporary virtue epistemology, on the other hand, is initiated by reading the story of the angry sage, Kauśika against the grain. Kauśika, a man of privilege, models an epistemic character that includes love of truth along with what can be called 'relational humility.' In its simplest form, this virtue is best described as a dynamic between self-ascribing ignorance and other-ascribing knowledge. Humility structured in this manner makes inquiry social and could facilitate learning from the margins. But once again, it is important to note that the epistemic community sustained by relational humility in the Mahābhārata shatters individual pride and solipsism of knowers, but might do little to upset the status quo of structural power within it. The challenge, then, is to reach out to other resources to...

How to Reconcile The Conflicts between Epistemic and Ethical Norms: An Examination of The Controversy over Randomized Controlled Trial and Clinical Equipoise

How to Reconcile The Conflicts between Epistemic and Ethical Norms: An Examination of The Controversy over Randomized Controlled Trial and Clinical Equipoise

Normativity in the Philosophy of Science

AbstractThis paper analyzes what it means for philosophy of science to be normative. It argues that normativity is a multifaceted phenomenon rather than a general feature that a philosophical theory either has or lacks. It analyzes the normativity of philosophy of science by articulating three ways in which a philosophical theory can be normative. Methodological normativity arises from normative assumptions that philosophers make when they select, interpret, evaluate, and mutually adjust relevant empirical information, on which they base their philosophical theories. Object normativity emerges from the fact that the object of philosophical theorizing can itself be normative, such as when philosophers discuss epistemic norms in science. Metanormativity arises from the kind of claims that a philosophical theory contains, such as normative claims about science as it should be. Distinguishing these three kinds of normativity gives rise to a nuanced and illuminating view of how philosophy of science can be normative.

Is Science Epistemically Autonomous?

In this overview of recent works in philosophy of science, the discussions of the nature of scientific rationalism and epistemic normativity of science are presented as taking place between the two extremes: the radical anarchism of social constructivism that claims that science has no epistemic normativity of its own and complete isolationism, according to which the rationalist norms of science are totally immune to any influence of non-scientific context. The author explores the arguments of the conception of social empiricism, according to which irrationality in the actions of individual scientists as well as in their motivation need not entail irrationality of science as a social enterprise because the factor of consensus plays a role in forming the picture of the world that ends up being accepted by the scientific community. The feminist attack on the traditional ethos of scientist is discussed. It is shown that feminist criticism revealed the hidden biases in what seemed to be a bias-free scientific worldview. However, some counterarguments against egalitarian principles of organization of science are also mentioned. Rudner’s hypothesis according to which the comparison of different pieces of evidence on the scale of credibility is always ethically biased is discussed and its influence on the contemporary philosophy of science is explored. Finally, the author presents some recent arguments that suggest that contextual influence on science can be legitimate and illegitimate.

The Proper Work of the Intellect

AbstractThere is a familiar teleological picture of epistemic normativity on which it is grounded in the goal or good of belief, which is taken in turn to be the acquisition of truth and the avoidance of error. There is also a widespread platitude to the effect that this is at heart two distinct goals in tension with one another. The teleological picture faces numerous challenges, but one of the most interesting is an argument that rests on this platitude. This paper looks more closely at the standard way of understanding the truth goal, drawing out its explicit and implicit features. The aim will be to show that the standard way the truth goal is understood is deeply mistaken, to propose and defend an alternative model, and to show how this alternative model restores the unity of the goal and its potential to ground and explain the normative dimensions of belief.

Resisting Structural Epistemic Injustice

What form must a theory of epistemic injustice take in order to successfully illuminate the epistemic dimensions of struggles that are primarily political? How can such struggles be understood as involving collective struggles for epistemic recognition and self-determination that seek to improve practices of knowledge production and make lives more liveable? In this paper, I argue that currently dominant, Fricker-inspired approaches to theorizing epistemic wrongs and remedies make it difficult, if not impossible, to understand the epistemic dimensions of historic and ongoing political struggles. Recent work in the theory of recognition—particularly the work of critical, feminist, and decolonial theorists—can help to identify and correct the shortcomings of these approaches. I offer a critical appraisal of recent conversation concerning epistemic injustice, focusing on three characteristics of Frickerian frameworks that obscure the epistemic dimensions of political struggles. I propose that a theory of epistemic injustice can better illuminate the epistemic dimensions of such struggles by acknowledging and centering the agency of victims in abusive epistemic relations, by conceptualizing the harms and wrongs of epistemic injustice relationally, and by explaining epistemic injustice as rooted in the oppressive and dysfunctional epistemic norms undergirding actual communities and institutions.

Epistemic normativity in Kant's “Second Analogy”

AbstractIn the “Second Analogy,” Kant argues that, unless mental contents involve the concept of causation, they cannot represent an objective temporal sequence. According to Kant, deploying the concept of causation renders a certain temporal ordering of representations necessary, thus enabling objective representational purport. One exegetical question that remains controversial is this: how, and in what sense, does deploying the concept of cause render a certain ordering of representations necessary? I argue that this necessitation is a matter of epistemic normativity: with certain causal presuppositions in place, the individual is obliged to make a judgment with certain temporal contents, on pain of irrationality. To make this normatively obligatory judgment, the subject must place her perceptual representations in a certain order. This interpretation fits Kant's text, his argumentative aims, and his broader views about causal inference, better than rival interpretations can. This result has important consequences for the ongoing debate over the role of normativity in Kant's philosophy of mind.

INTRODUCTION: SPECIAL ISSUE ON AGENCY AND RATIONALITY

This issue aims to explore the nature of rational agency, both practical and epistemic. Typically, exercises of our rational agency are governed by certain practical and epistemic norms. However, it is far from clear what exactly these norms are, or how we are to understand the way in which they govern us in acting and believing.