This paper is concerned with identifying and accounting for cases where the epistemic standard is raised inappropriately. The first section is concerned with identifying a notion of a variable epistemic standard that is neutral regarding a range of theoretical issues. The second section draws upon Evelyn Brister’s work on contextualism and scepticism as well as more recent work on conceptual engineering to argue that the possibility that our knowledge discourse could be manipulated by nefarious actors warrants further investigation. The third section outlines and provides a partial explanation of such a case: one in which a climate change denier attempts to raise the epistemic standard in order to shut down inquiry.

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Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

Wrongful ways to raise the epistemic standard

People partaking in a conversation can add to the common ground of said conversation by performing different speech acts. That is, they can influence which propositions are presumed to be shared among them. In this paper, I am going to apply the common ground framework to the phenomenon of epistemic injustice. In doing so, I am going to focus on two kinds of speech acts: making assertions and asking certain kinds of questions. And I am going to look at three varieties of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice, inquiring injustice and interpretative injustice. I am going to argue that what all these varieties of epistemic injustice have in common is that they unfairly inhibit the speaker’s ability to add to the common ground in the way intended by her. This in turn negatively affects which conversational roles a speaker can play in a given conversation. Based on these results, I am going to end by looking at some of the harms that epistemic injustice inflicts upon its victims.

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Common Ground, Conversational Roles and Epistemic Injustice

background

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The Evidence for Contextualism about Knowledge Ascriptions

My aim in the present paper is to develop a new kind of argument in support of the ideal of liberal neutrality This argument combines some basic moral principles with a thesis about the relationship between the correct standards of justification for a belief/action and certain contextual factors The idea is that the level of importance of what is at stake in a specific context of action determines how demanding the correct standards to justify an action based on a specific set of beliefs ought to be In certain exceptional contexts –where the seriousness of harm in case of mistake and the level of an agent’s responsibility for the outcome of his action are specially high– a very small probability of making a mistake should be recognized as a good reason to avoid to act based on beliefs that we nonetheless affirm with a high degree of confidence and that actually justify our action in other contexts The further steps of the argument consist in probing 1) that the fundamental state’s policies are such a case of exceptional context, 2) that perfectionist policies are the type of actions we should avoid, and 3) that policies that satisfy neutral standards of justification are not affected by the reasons which lead to reject perfectionist policies

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Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

Citations

Wrongful ways to raise the epistemic standard

Common Ground, Conversational Roles and Epistemic Injustice

The Evidence for Contextualism about Knowledge Ascriptions

An Epistemic Argument in Support of Liberal Neutrality

Sensitivity: Checking into Knowing?

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