Knowing With

Abstract

This dissertation comprises four chapters. Its goal is to defend a thoroughly social epistemic framework and to explore some important normative implications of it.

In Chapter 1, entitled “Epistemic Communities and Epistemic Normativity,” I propose that there are epistemic communities of which we are all members. Roughly, an epistemic community, in the sense at issue, is a network of individuals who routinely interact and influence one another with respect to their significant beliefs, such that they generate significant epistemic overlap among themselves. The members of an epistemic community have epistemic overlap, in the sense at issue, just in case they have extensive similarities among many of the following types of epistemic items: beliefs, intuitions, methods of reasoning, trusted sources of evidence, questions, and so on. Epistemic communities may in some cases be intentionally contrived, as perhaps is the case with the members of a philosophy department, but most often develop organically among groups of friends, neighbors, coworkers, and the like.

I also claim that there are epistemic values that cannot be realized by a single individual alone, unlike such traditional epistemic values as knowledge, true belief, or understanding. In particular, I argue for the existence of a “communal” epistemic value that I call “epistemic convergence.” Epistemic convergence, roughly, amounts to agreement between two epistemic agents or communities where each agent or community takes into account or gives weight, in their own belief, to the fact that the other agent or community believes the proposition about which they agree. I suggest that being in epistemic convergence with another person or community is a way of according a distinctively epistemic kind of respect to that person or community. Finally, I suggest that there are epistemic norms grounded in the fact that we are members of epistemic communities and in the fact that there are such thoroughly social epistemic values as epistemic convergence.

In Chapter 2, entitled “On Trust: Extending the Epistemic Self,” I argue, partly on the basis of some of the claims defended in Chapter 1, for a norm regarding trust. I argue that our epistemic communities become a kind of extended epistemic self for us. Because self-trust is deeply inescapable for epistemic agents, we ought to extend the trust we have in ourselves to our epistemic communities. Failure to do so, absent relevant defeaters, would be objectionably arbitrary and inconsistent. So, absent relevant defeaters, I ought to trust the word of a fellow member of my epistemic community when she tells me something. Relevant defeaters, in these cases, are those that break the epistemic symmetry between myself and my fellow epistemic community member. I argue that although such defeaters exist, very often they don’t arise in particular cases. Consequently, we are often in fact obligated to trust our fellow epistemic community members.

In Chapter 3, entitled “On Inquiry: Escaping Epistemic Bubbles,” I argue for the existence of a norm regarding inquiry. I argue that we very often ought to inquire into the truth or falsity of the very propositions we believe based on trust in our fellow epistemic community members. Epistemic communities have a tendency to become more and more isolated from other epistemic communities, thereby turning into epistemic bubbles. Epistemic bubbles, moreover, very straightforwardly prevent epistemic convergence beyond a single epistemic community. In order to prevent or break down epistemic bubbles and make possible epistemic convergence, we ought to inquire outside of our communities, especially into those things we believe based on trust. For it is our beliefs based on trust that contribute to the greatest risk of epistemic bubbling.

In Chapter 4, entitled “Trust and Inquiry: An Epistemic Balancing Act,” I argue that, despite the intuitive tension between trusting someone that a particular proposition is true and inquiring into the truth or falsity of that very proposition, we can combine trust and inquiry in this way without thereby doing anything irrational. In fact, I argue, the intuitive tension between trust and inquiry is like the tension involved in a balancing act. Inquiry and trust pull against one another, but the tension between them helps the whole epistemic project succeed. Contrary to what many have thought, I argue that it is not too much trust that explains what is going wrong with epistemic bubbles. Instead, what is going wrong is a failure to combine and balance trust with inquiry in the right way. I also argue that this difficult balancing act between our epistemic independence, of which inquiry is a prime example, and our epistemic dependence, of which trust is a prime example, is crucial to a well-lived epistemic life.