In this paper I will argue that Regan’s subjects-of-a-life account is epistemically irresponsible. Firstly, in making so many epistemic claims. Secondly in making the claims themselves.

Epistemic responsibility involves at least two central ideas. (V) To be epistemically responsible is to display the virtue(s) epistemic internalists take to be central to justification (e.g., coherence, having good reasons, fitting the evidence). (C) In normal (non-skeptical)circumstances and in thelong run, epistemic responsibility is strongly positively correlated with reliability. Sections 1 and 2 review evidence showing that for a wide range of real-world problems, the most reliable, tractable reasoning strategies audaciously flout the internalist''s epistemic virtues. (...) In Section 3, I argue that these results force us to give up either (V), our current conception of what it is to be epistemically responsible, or (C) the responsibility-reliability connection. I will argue that we should relinquish (V). This is likely to reshape our epistemic practices. It will force us to alter our epistemic judgments about certain instances of reasoning, to endorse some counterintuitive epistemic prescriptions, and to rethink what it is for cognitive agents to be epistemically responsible. (shrink)

Recognizing that truth is socially constructed or that knowledge and power are related is hardly a novelty in the social sciences. In the twenty-first century, however, there appears to be a renewed concern regarding people’s relationship with the truth and the propensity for certain actors to undermine it. Organizations are highly implicated in this, given their central roles in knowledge management and production and their attempts to learn, although the entanglement of these epistemological issues with business ethics has not been (...) engaged as explicitly as it might be. Drawing on work from a virtue epistemology perspective, this paper outlines the idea of a set of epistemic vices permeating organizations, along with examples of unethical epistemic conduct by organizational actors. While existing organizational research has examined various epistemic virtues that make people and organizations effective and responsible epistemic agents, much less is known about the epistemic vices that make them ineffective and irresponsible ones. Accordingly, this paper introduces vice epistemology, a nascent but growing subfield of virtue epistemology which, to the best of our knowledge, has yet to be explicitly developed in terms of business ethics. The paper concludes by outlining a business ethics research agenda on epistemic vice, with implications for responding to epistemic vices and their illegitimacy in practice. (shrink)

Philosophers often find themselves in disagreement with contemporary philosophers they know full well to be their epistemic superiors on the topics relevant to the disagreement. This looks epistemically irresponsible. I offer a detailed investigation of this problem of the reflective epistemic renegade. I argue that although in some cases the renegade is not epistemically blameworthy, and the renegade situation is significantly less common than most would think, in a troublesome number of cases in which the situation arises (...) the renegade is blameworthy in her disagreement with recognized epistemic superiors. I also offer some thoughts on what it would mean for philosophical practice for us to refrain from being renegades. Finally, I show how a new kind of radical skepticism emerges from modest theses regarding the renegade. (shrink)

On what has become the received view of the principle of charity, it is a fundamental methodological constraint on interpretation that we find peoples’ intentional states patterned in ways that are characterized by norms of rationality. This recommended use of normative principles of rationality to inform intentional description is epistemically unmotivated. To say that the received view lacks epistemic motivation is to say that to interpret as it recommends would be epistemically irresponsible ans, in important respects irrational. On (...) the alternative that I recommend, descriptive psychological generalization are what properly inform interpretation. One can readily understand the epistemic motivations for so interpreting, for they are the familiar reasons for informing description with background descriptive information. No parallel motivations for the received view seems possible. (shrink)

I discuss Alston's theory of religious experience and maintain that his argument to the effect that it is rational to suppose that the 'mystical doxastic practice' is epistemically reliable does not stand up to scrutiny. While Alston's transitions from practical to epistemic rationality don't work here, his arguments may be taken to show that, under certain conditions, it is not epistemically irresponsible to trust one's religious experiences.

This article explores the issue of discoverability and abductive creativity in scientific cognition, focusing on the challenges faced by biopharmaceutical companies in their R&D organization. The author argues that these companies are generating “impoverished epistemic niches”, which threaten fundamental aspects of modern science. The author proposes the concept of epistemic irresponsibility, emphasizing the importance of “knowledge in motion” in multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary scientific research. The increasing expansion of commodification and commercialization of science, marketing of technoscientific products, and (...) the impoverishment of epistemic niches seem to already threaten the flourishing of human creativity and successful abductive creative cognition in science. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper argues that instances of what are typically called ‘epistemic irresponsibility’ are better understood as instances of moral or prudenial failure. This hypothesis covers the data and is simpler than postulating a new sui generis form of normativitiy. The irresponsibility alleged is that embeded in charges of ‘You should have known better!’ However, I argue, either there is some interest at stake in knowing or there is not. If there is not, then there is no irresponsibility. If (...) there is, it is either the inquirer's interests—in which case it is a prudential shortcoming—or someone else's interests are at stake—in which case it is a moral shortcoming. In no case, I argue, is there any need to postulate a form of normativity in epistemology other than the traditional epistemological norm that one's attitudes should fit the evidence one has. (shrink)

When it comes to the public debate about the challenge of global climate change, moral questions are inextricably intertwined with epistemological ones. This manifests itself in at least two distinct ways. First, for a fixed set of epistemic standards, it may be irresponsible to delay policy-making until everyone agrees that such standards have been met. This has been extensively discussed in the literature on the precautionary principle. Second, key actors in the public debate may – for strategic reasons, (...) or out of simple carelessness – engage in the selective variation of epistemic standards in response to evidence that would threaten to undermine their core beliefs, effectively leading to epistemic double standards that make rational agreement impossible. The latter scenario is aptly described as an instance of what Stephen Gardiner calls ‘epistemic corruption’. In the present paper, I aim to give an explanation of the cognitive basis of epistemic corruption and discuss its place within the moral landscape of the debate. In particular, I argue that epistemic corruption often reflects an agent’s attempt to reduce dissonance between incoming scientific evidence and the agent’s ideological core commitments. By selectively discounting the former, agents may attempt to preserve the coherence of the latter, yet in doing so they threaten to damage the integrity of evidence-based deliberation. (shrink)

The way in which the theory of “group selection” was treated as a heresy in evolutionary biology during the latter part of the twentieth century is considered as itself being an emergent group phenomenon, and some possible reasons why this particular theory had to be repudiated by the dominant group are explored. Then the process of “heresy-hammering” in general is examined as a behavior that can block important feedback, allowing the group to engage in a form of collective selfdeception, and (...) is therefore judged to be epistemically irresponsible and potentially maladaptive in terms of the group’s long-term survival. Some possible methods of foiling this process—which seems to operate largely below the level of full conscious awareness—are proposed. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of compatibility of the extended mind thesis with the concept of epistemic responsibility. This compatibility problem lies at the intersection of two current trends in Virtue Epistemology (VE): the study of extended cognition, and the return of VE to the topic of epistemic responsibility. I give objections to two seemingly independent positions; their acceptance makes it difficult or even impossible to make the concept of epistemic responsibility applicable to the agents of (...) digital society whose cognition is extended. The core of both positions can be illustrated by the following thesis: “Since the subject cannot voluntarily change his/her beliefs, we cannot ascribe to him/her either epistemic responsibility or intellectual virtues that allow him/her to take responsibility”. The counter-arguments to this thesis are based on the distinction between the causal (responsibility-in) and normative (responsibility-for) components of responsibility. The absence of the former allows us to characterize the subject as not responsible, the absence of the latter as irresponsible. I propose two conceptual foundations that can make possible the consistent talk about the epistemic responsibility of an extended subject. 1) The subject may not be responsible for the beliefs taken from the epistemic environment, but the subject bears significant responsibility for what environment he finds himself in. 2) Being epistemically responsible means deliberately reducing the number of possible causal excuses – excuses based on agent’s unresponsibiity due to his causal dependence on his epistemic environment (‘cognitive extensions’). (shrink)

In this article, I propose to look at the organisation of reproductive labour in the ‘global North’ through a lens of epistemic ignorance. Focusing on the process of outsourcing, I argue that it creates forms of irresponsibility, and with it, epistemic ignorance. The devaluation of domestic work and the degradation of domestic workers is shaped by gendered and colonial ideologies, and Western epistemologies. These epistemologies underpin a strong subject/object split and buffer the denial of existing interdependencies. I problematise (...) those epistemologies by drawing on feminist care ethics, accounts of relational selves and relational responsibility, and alternative epistemologies. Grounding that discussion on vignettes from an in-depth study of heterosexual couples in Austrian households who outsource domestic work, I argue that the systematic failure to see what and who we are connected to in the domestic realm is shaped by gendered and racialised privilege, and driven by an epistemology of separation. My argument will unfold in two steps. First, I use the concept of the skin as an example of how the beliefs in an independent, autonomous self and a strong subject/object split disguise connectedness and relationality. This leads me to the second step, in which I explicate my notion of semipermeable membranes – a thinking together of ontological permeability and ethical responsiveness. I argue that active forms of ‘unknowing’ at work in ‘mundane,’ everyday, domestic performances have far-reaching consequences. (shrink)

When is a person justified in believing a proposition? In this paper, I defend a view according to which a person is justified in believing a proposition just in case the person’s evidence sufficiently supports the proposition and the person responsibly acquired and sustained the evidence that supports the proposition. This view overcomes a deficiency in a prominent theory of epistemic justification. As championed by Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, Evidentialism is a theory subject to counterexamples at the hands (...) of cases involving epistemic irresponsibility. I critically discuss such a case as put forward by Jason Baehr. After providing an argument that clarifies why the case is problematic for Evidentialism, I defend my argument from a response by Earl Conee. Then I develop a theory of epistemic justification capable of handling cases involving epistemic irresponsibility, and I defend this theory from evidentialist objections. (shrink)

In his influential work on critical argumentation, Douglas Walton explains how to judge whether an argumentum ad verecundiam is fallacious or legitimate. He provides six critical questions and a number of ancillary sub-questions to guide the identification of reasonable appeals to authority. While it is common for informal logicians to acknowledge the role of bias in sampling procedures and hypothesis confirmation , there is a conspicuous lack of discourse on the effect of identity prejudice on judgments of authority, even though (...) this is a well-documented factor in attributing credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, and professional competence to oppressed groups. This could result in faulty judgments of ad verecundiam fallacy. Focusing on gender bias, I review recent works in feminist epistemology—particularly those of Miranda Fricker and Helen Longino —to develop three gender-based critical questions to supplement Walton’s original list of six. This addition will help us to identify erroneous dismissals of appeals to authority based on epistemic injustice and epistemic irresponsibility on the part of the speaker or knowledge community. This project promotes the overlapping aims of feminist epistemology and informal logic. (shrink)

This book employs a new eco-cognitive model of abduction to underline the distributed and embodied nature of scientific cognition. Its main focus is on the knowledge-enhancing virtues of abduction and on the productive role of scientific models. What are the distinctive features that define the kind of knowledge produced by science? To provide an answer to this question, the book first addresses the ideas of Aristotle, who stressed the essential inferential and distributed role of external cognitive tools and epistemic (...) mediators in abductive cognition. This is analyzed in depth from both a naturalized logic and an ecology of cognition perspective. It is shown how the maximization of cognition, and of abducibility – two typical goals of science – are related to a number of fundamental aspects: the optimization of the eco-cognitive situatedness; the maximization of changeability for both the input and the output of the inferences involved; a high degree of information-sensitiveness; and the need to record the “past life” of abductive inferential practices. Lastly, the book explains how some impoverished epistemological niches – the result of a growing epistemic irresponsibility associated with the commodification and commercialization of science – are now seriously jeopardizing the flourishing development of human creative abduction. (shrink)

I intend to argue that good friendship sometimes requires epistemic irresponsibility. To put it another way, it is not always possible to be both a good friend and a diligent believer.

In today’s science, the output of measurement processes are often visual representations of the data detected. Moreover, we find such visual data as parts of scientific reasoning in different contexts. In this article, we will take a look at two of them. On the one hand, visual representations are used as a kind of surrogate for the real object to ask questions about it – we will call this the exploratory use of visual data. On the other hand, visualisations are (...) often used to communicate research results to scientific peers or to laymen. Instances of the latter case we will subsequently call the explanatory use of visual data. However, in both contexts the question arises what might justify these epistemic practices. Believing without reasons is epistemically irresponsible, it leads to gullibility. Thus, we will try to answer the question whether there are any reasons to support our epistemic practices concerning scientific visualisations in the above-mentioned senses and whether these are good reasons to rely on. (shrink)

Ernest Sosa has argued that the solution to dream scepticism lies in an understanding of dreams as imaginative experiences – when we dream, on this suggestion, we do not believe the contents of our dreams, but rather imagine them. Sosa rebuts scepticism thus: dreams don’t cause false beliefs, so my beliefs cannot be false, having been caused by dreams. I argue that, even assuming that Sosa is correct about the nature of dreaming, belief in wakefulness on these grounds is epistemically (...) irresponsible. The proper upshot of the imagination model, I suggest, is to recharacterize the way we think about dream scepticism: the sceptical threat is not, after all, that we have false beliefs. So even though dreams don’t involve false beliefs, they still pose a sceptical threat, which I elaborate. (shrink)

In this brief reply to Axtell, I review some general considerations pertaining to the disagreement and then reply point-by-point to Axtell's critique of thedilemma I pose for responsibilists in virtue epistemology. Thus I re-affirm my reductionist identity thesis that every case of epistemic irresponsibility is either a case of ordinary moral irresponsibility or ordinary practical irrationality.

In this paper, I argue that the objections to both doxastic volitionism and doxastic voluntarism fail. Objections to doxastic volitionism and doxastic voluntarism assume a generic notion of belief, a notion which covers both beliefs about things which we know or think we know or are evident to us, as well as beliefs which have some degree of credence but are not clearly evident to the subject. The generic notion of belief includes both sorts of beliefs, but the position against (...) doxastic volitionism is supported only by appeal to beliefs about things which are evident or that we think we know. However, by showing that beliefs which we think we know to be true are not voluntary, the objections leaves open the question whether belief as such is voluntary. Contrary to the opponents of doxastic volitionism, I will show that if what we are after is a generic notion of belief, it ought to be construed as holding true; and if this is what constitutes belief as such, the arguments against doxastic volitionism for faith beliefs fail. The strongest argument against doxastic voluntarism is an evidentialist argument concerning the ethics of belief. That argument is basically that even if choosing belief is psychologically possible, evidentialism rules it out as epistemically irresponsible. In the last section of this article, I will argue that if religious belief is constituted by true propositions of the faith, the evidentialist objection to doxastic voluntarism fails. (shrink)

Insulation is a noticeable phenomenon in the case of most non-Pyrrhonian sceptics about human knowledge. A sceptic is experiencing insulation when his scepticism does not have any effect on his common sense beliefs, and his common sense beliefs do not have any effect on his scepticism. I try to show why this is a puzzling phenomenon, and how it can be explained. It is puzzling because insulation seems to require blindness to one's own epistemic irresponsibility and irrationality, while the (...) sceptic presumably cares a lot about being epistemically responsible and rational. Insulation can be explained by means of a notion of philosophical detachment: to be detached from one's own beliefs about the world is to take an other-personal position towards those beliefs, treating them as if they are another person's beliefs. It is because of this that the sceptic's scepticism is insulated from his scepticism because he cannot be detached from his beliefs about the world when he is engaging in everyday, practical activities. I conclude the paper with a brief discussion of the generality of the problem of insulation. (shrink)

Meet longtime Tarot reader and renowned occultist Renée O’Cards. Wracked with guilt over her epistemic irresponsibility, seized with fear of being deceived by a malignant demon, and prone to escape into sleep and dreams for unknown time periods, she turns to the consolation of First Philosophy.

This paper argues that, despite the widespread assumption that everyone has an absolute right to hold any religious belief whatever, no matter how bizarre or irrational, there are limits to responsible belief. Epistemic responsibility means that we are not entitled to hold beliefs that, by recognized epistemic methods, have been discredited. The paper distinguishes epistemic responsibility from legal and from moral responsibility. Because our beliefs tend to affect our behavior, epistemically irresponsible beliefs become morally irresponsible (...) when they conduce to discrimination or harm. To insist that scripture and religious doctrine must be believed literally and in every detail is epistemically irresponsible, because they have been shown to be, at many points, inconsistent with well-established scientific and historical knowledge. Such beliefs are morally irresponsible when they encourage racism or discrimination against women, gays and lesbians, ethnic groups, the poor, or any other individual or group. (shrink)

This paper argues that, despite the widespread assumption that everyone has an absolute right to hold any religious belief whatever, no matter how bizarre or irrational, there are limits to responsible belief. Epistemic responsibility means that we are not entitled to hold beliefs that, by recognized epistemic methods, have been discredited. The paper distinguishes epistemic responsibility from legal and from moral responsibility. Because our beliefs tend to affect our behavior, epistemically irresponsible beliefs become morally irresponsible (...) when they conduce to discrimination or harm. To insist that scripture and religious doctrine must be believed literally and in every detail is epistemically irresponsible, because they have been shown to be, at many points, inconsistent with well-established scientific and historical knowledge. Such beliefs are morally irresponsible when they encourage racism or discrimination against women, gays and lesbians, ethnic groups, the poor, or any other individual or group. (shrink)

Justification depends on context: even if E on its own justifies H, still it might fail to justify in the context of D. This sort of effect, epistemologists think, is due to defeaters, which undermine or rebut a would-be justifier. I argue that there is another fundamental sort of contextual feature, disqualification, which doesn't involve rebuttal or undercutting, and which cannot be reduced to any notion of screening-off. A disqualifier makes some would-be justifier otiose, as direct testimony sometimes does to (...) distal testimony, and as manifestly decisive evidence might do to gratuitous evidence on the same team. Basing a belief on disqualified evidence, moreover, is distinctively irrational. One is not necessarily irresponsible. Instead one is turning down a free upgrade to a sleeker, stabler basis for one's beliefs. Such an upgrade would prevent wastes of epistemic effort, since someone who bases her belief on a disqualified proposition E will need to remember E and rethink her belief should E ever be defeated. The upgrade might also reduce reliance on unwieldy evidence, if E is relevant only thanks to some labyrinthine argument; and if even ideal agents should doubt their ability to follow such arguments, even they should care about disqualifiers. (shrink)

The turbulent times we live in, product of the COVID-19 pandemic, creating an ideal breeding ground for the proliferation of myths and conspiracy theories. These myths and theories are often popular on social media, defended by irresponsible politicians and published by the media in search of ratings or likes. But none of these meet the theoretical virtues that a good scientific theory should enjoy, in particular, none of these conspiracy theories about the disease caused by the SARS CoV-2 virus (...) has the attribute of being simple. Our purpose in this article is to illuminate how it is possible that simplicity, within the framework of theoretical virtues, can function as an epistemic criterion to reveal the irrational and, consequently, unscientific nature of myths and conspiracy theories. (shrink)

This essay replies to Michael Morreau and Erik J. Olsson’s ‘Learning from Ranters: The Effect of Information Resistance on the Epistemic Quality of Social Network Deliberation’. Morreau and Olsson use simulations to suggest that false ranters—agents who do not update their beliefs and only ever assert false claims—do not diminish the epistemic value of deliberation for other agents and can even be epistemically valuable. They argue conclude that “Our study suggests that including [false] ranters has little or no (...) negative effect on the epistemic value of social deliberation. Including them can even be epistemically beneficial. -/- I present concerns about their model and I enumerate some epistemic values that their discussion omits. I first raise two interrelated worries: (i.) The model is too simple; real-life irresponsible assertors do not speak uniformly falsely, for example. And tracking testifiers’ reliability demands cognitive resources. (ii.) In reality, we do not treat a person’s assertions that p as evidence that not p, especially not for all their assertions. I argue that these simplifications threat Morreau and Olsson conclusion. -/- I then enumerate epistemic values and disvalues that Morreau and Olsson do not discuss, but which bear on the value of false assertions and false ranters in their simulation and in real life. Candidate disvalues include: False beliefs of ranters; cognitive costs of discerning and recalling testifiers’ reliability; distrust; epistemic polarisatin; a prevalence of false assertion can impugn all testimony, including that of reliable testifiers. And candidate values include: a prevalence of true beliefs and assertions; attention being directed towards the right things; well-functioning trust relationships; believing people’s assertions; healthy discussion; epistemic respect; learning together. -/- . (shrink)

Opponents of abortion are often described as ‘inconsistent’ (hypocrites) in terms of their beliefs, actions and/or priorities. They are alleged to do too little to combat spontaneous abortion, they should be adopting cryopreserved embryos with greater frequency and so on. These types of arguments—which we call ‘inconsistency arguments’—conform to a common pattern. Each specifies what consistent opponents of abortion would do (or believe), asserts that they fail to act (or believe) accordingly and concludes that they are inconsistent. Here, we show (...) that inconsistency arguments fail en masse. In short, inconsistency arguments typically face four problems. First, they usually fail to account for diversity among opponents of abortion. Second, they rely on inferences about consistency based on isolated beliefs shared by some opponents of abortion (and these inferences often do not survive once we consider other beliefs opponents of abortion tend to hold). Third, inconsistency arguments usually ignore the diverse ways in which opponents of abortion might act on their beliefs. Fourth, inconsistency arguments criticise groups of people without threatening their beliefs (eg, that abortion is immoral). Setting these problems aside, even supposing inconsistency arguments are successful, they hardly matter. In fact, in the two best-case scenarios—where inconsistency arguments succeed—they either encourage millions of people to make the world a (much) worse place (from the critic’s perspective) or promote epistemically and morally irresponsible practices. We conclude that a more valuable discussion would be had by focusing on the arguments made by opponents of abortion rather than opponents themselves. (shrink)

According to evidentialism, a subject is justified in believing a proposition at a time, just in case their evidence on balance supports that proposition at that time. Evidentialist justification is thus a property of fit – fitting the subject’s evidence. However, evidentialism does not evaluate the subject’s evidence beyond this relation of fit. For instance, evidentialism ignores whether the subject was responsible or negligent in their inquiry. A number of objections have been raised to evidentialism involving cases of irresponsible (...) inquiry and the relevance of unpossessed evidence. In this paper, I argue that while these objections miss their mark, they do help motivate a distinct, and richer, concept of epistemic justification. This different concept of justification, what I call ‘robust justification’, supplements the evidentialist account of epistemic justification with an assessment of the subject’s evidence with respect to their inquiry. According to this proposal, to be robustly justified in believing a proposition at a time, the subject’s evidence must support that proposition at that time and that evidence must be the result of the subject’s responsible inquiry. While robust justification is not necessary for knowledge, I argue that it is an independently valuable epistemic state. (shrink)

Recently it has been argued that certain neuropsychological findings on the decision-making, instrumental learning, and moral understanding in psychopathic offenders offer reasons to consider them not criminally responsible, due to certain epistemic and volitional impairments. We reply to this family of arguments, that collectively we call the irresponsibility of the psychopath argument. This type of argument has a premise that describes or prescribes the deficiencies that grant or should grant partial or complete criminal exculpation. The other premise contends that (...) neuropsychological evidence shows that psychopaths have incapacitates that are sufficient to ascribe complete or partially exculpatory deficiencies. The focus of our criticism is this latter premise. We argue that it requires that psychopathy should correlate significantly with certain rational incapacities that manifest across contexts. We show that the available neuropsychological data do not support the claim that psychopaths have such general exculpatory incapacities. (shrink)

The idea that experts (especially scientific experts) play a privileged role in determining the meanings of our words and the contents of our concepts has become commonplace since the work of Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and others in the 1970s. But if experts have the power to determine what our words mean, they can do so responsibly or irresponsibly, from good motivations or bad, justly or unjustly, with good or bad effects. This paper distinguishes three families of metasemantic views based (...) on their attitudes towards bad behaviour by meaning-fixing experts, and draws a series of distinctions relevant for the normative evaluation of meaning-determining actions. (shrink)

From what norms does the ethics of belief derive its oughts, its attributions of virtues and vices, responsibilities and irresponsibilities, its permissioning and censuring? Since my inductive risk account is inspired by pragmatism, and this method understands epistemology as the theory of inquiry, the paper will try to explain what the aims and tasks are for an ethics of belief, or project of guidance, which best fits with this understanding of epistemology. More specifically, this chapter approaches the ethics of belief (...) from a focus on responsible risk management, where doxastic responsibility is understood in terms of the degree of riskiness of agents’ doxastic strategies, a riskiness which is in turn most objectively measured through accordance or violation of inductive norms. Doxastic responsibility is attributable to agents on the basis of how epistemically risky was the process or strategy of inquiry salient in the etiology of their belief or in their maintenance of what one believes or accepts. (shrink)

Delusions are usually considered as harmful and dysfunctional beliefs, one of the primary symptoms of a psychiatric illness and the mark of madness in popular culture. However, in recent times a much more positive role has been advocated for delusions. More specifically, it has been argued that delusions might be an answer to a problem rather than problems in themselves. By delivering psychological and epistemic benefits, delusions would allow people who face severe biological or psychological difficulties to survive in (...) their environment - although this has obvious epistemic costs, as the delusion is fixed and irresponsive to compelling counterevidence. In other words, it has been argued that delusions are biologically adaptive. The adaptiveness of delusions has been compared by Ryan McKay and Daniel Dennett to a shear pin, a mechanism installed in the drive engine of some machines which is designed to shear whenever the machine is about to break down. By breaking, shear pins prevent the machine from collapsing and allow it to keep functioning, although in an impaired manner. Similarly, when delusions form, they would allow a cognitive or psychological system which is about to collapse to continue its functioning, although in an impaired manner. However, this optimistic picture of delusions risks being undermined by both theoretical and empirical considerations. Using Sarah Fineberg and Philip Corlett’s recent predictive coding account as a paradigmatic model of the biological adaptiveness of delusions, I develop two objections to it: principles of parsimony and simplicity suggest that maladaptive models of delusions have an upper hand over adaptive models; and the available empirical evidence suggests that at least some delusions stand good chances of being psychologically adaptive, but it is unlikely that they also qualify as biologically adaptive. (shrink)

I argue that beliefs based on irresponsibly formed experiences — whose causes were not appropriately regulated by the subject — are doxastically unjustified. Only this position, I claim, accounts for the higher epistemic standard required of perceptual experts. Section I defends this standard and applies it to a pair of cases in which either an expert umpire or a complete novice judge a force play in baseball. I argue that when the latter, but not the former, fails to follow (...) rules about perceiving force plays, their resulting belief is justified. Section II shows that this difference can be explained by the fact that the novice, but not the expert, formed her experience responsibly. Section III shows that alternative explanations of the expert’s unjustified belief — from defeat, reliability, and inference — fail. Section IV shows that the epistemic relevance of responsible experience formation has broad implications for the epistemology of perceptual beliefs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay calls attention to two blind spots in Power Without Knowledge. First, the book has little to say about the role that political institutions can play in promoting effective democratic governance. Drawing on the “mixed government” tradition, I argue that properly designed institutions can correct for the epistemic deficits that Friedman describes by creating what I call the “pressure to conflict.” Second and more importantly, the book has nothing to say about the role of responsible leadership in (...) a democratic technocracy. Drawing on Max Weber’s analysis of the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of conviction, I argue that responsible leadership can promote judicious technocracy in a dynamic that I call the “spiral of responsibility.” The responsible leader recognizes that to recuse oneself from the exercise of technocratic power is to empower the unscrupulous and irresponsible. According to Weber, any theory of politics that fails to embrace the ethics of responsibility will therefore occupy an uneasy middle ground between quietism and enthusiasm. This, I fear, is where Power Without Knowledge may leave us. (shrink)

The biological sciences provide ample opportunity and motivation for feminist interventions. These sciences are seen by many as an authority on human nature and are highly relevant to many issues of social justice and public policy. Feminist philosophy of biology focuses on the ethical and epistemic adequacy and responsibility of biological claims. This work is critical in the sense of identifying epistemically and ethically irresponsible knowledge claims, research practices, and dissemination of biological research regarding sex/gender, including ways that (...) sex/gender interacts with other social categories. In this chapter we describe classic themes in feminist philosophy of biology, with particular regard to research practices and metaphysical assumptions. We then go on to argue that these classic themes remain salient in contemporary neuroscientific investigations of human emotion and in feminist research on the evolution of human behavior. (shrink)

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing, has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributors of this book present conversations between leading scholars from Israel and Germany based on an empirical bioethical perspective, analyses about the reshaping of 'life' by biomedicine, and philosophical reflections on socio-cultural claims and epistemic horizons of responsibilities. Practices (...) and discussions of reproductive medicine transform the concepts of responsibility and irresponsibility. (shrink)