In Praise of Epistemic Irresponsibility: How Lazy and Ignorant Can You Be?

Synthese 122 (1-2):179 - 208 (2000)
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Abstract

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.

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Michael Bishop
Florida State University

Citations of this work

In Trust We Trust: Epistemic Vigilance and Responsibility.Neil Levy - 2022 - Social Epistemology 36 (3):283-298.
The (virtue) epistemology of political ignorance.Cameron Boult - 2021 - American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (3):217-232.
Evidence and Bias.Nick Hughes - 2019 - In Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence. Routledge.

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References found in this work

The structure of empirical knowledge.Laurence BonJour - 1985 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Epistemology and cognition.Alvin I. Goldman - 1986 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Warrant: The Current Debate.Warrant and Proper Function.Alvin Plantinga - 1993 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.

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