Abstract

Philosophical anarchists hold that there is no such thing as genuine practical authority. Most epistemologists seem to at least tacitly accept an analogous position with respect to theoretical authority, that there is no such thing as a kind of authority over belief that is robustly analogous to genuine practical authority. I argue that appreciating this has an important consequence. Absent reason to think that there is a relevant difference between the practical and theoretical cases, anarchism about practical and theoretical authority should either stand or fall together.