The Ethics of Scepticism: Epistemic Blame and the Social Dynamics of Epistemic Risk-Taking
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2026.e105462Palabras clave:
Social Epistemology, Radical Scepticism, Epistemic Blame, Epistemic Credit, Epistemic RiskResumen
This paper levels a charge of free riding against the figure of the radical sceptic. Due to their persistent resistance to attributing knowledge to themselves and others, the radical sceptic limits their contributions to the social context to “mere estimates” or “mere opinions.” Through these “careful beliefs,” they aim to avoid all epistemic risk—something they can achieve only at the cost of falling short of the expectations we legitimately have of our cognitive partners, namely, that they carefully offer us their “full beliefs” as critical cognitive attitudes that reflect a personal stance on the facts. The implication of these radical sceptical attitudes in the social context is an imbalance in the attribution of epistemic credit, which justifies, on our part, an attitude of epistemic blame.
Citas
Axtell, G. 2021. Cultivating Doxastic Responsibility: Ameliorative Epistemological Projects and the Ethics of Knowledge. Humana.Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies 14(39).
Baehr, J. 2010. Epistemic Malevolence. Metaphilosophy 41(1/2): 189-213.
Boult, C. 2021. Epistemic blame. Philosophy Compass 16(8): e12762.
Broncano, F. 2020. Conocimiento expropiado: Epistemología política en una democracia radical. Akal.
Burnyeat, M. F. 1982. Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed. The Philosophical Review 91(1): 3-40.
Burnyeat, M. F. 2012. Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
Byrne, A. 2021. Perception and Probability. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research phpr.12768.
Cassam, Q. 2021. Misunderstanding Vaccine Hesitancy: A Case Study in Epistemic Injustice. Educational Philosophy and Theory: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2006055.
Chignell, A. 2018. The Ethics of Belief. In: E.N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018). Stanford University.
Chrisman, M. 2020. Believing as We Ought and the Democratic Route to Knowledge. In: S. Schmidt; G. Ernst (eds.), The Ethics of Belief and Beyond: Understanding Mental Normativity. London: Routledge.
Clifford, W. K. 1999 [1877]. The Ethics of Belief. In: T. J. Madigan (ed.), The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays, p.70-96. New York: Prometheus Books.
Descartes, R. 2016 [1637]. Discours de la Méthode. Paris: Flammarion.
Descartes, R. 2008 [1641]. Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies. Translated by Michael Moriarty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evans, G. 1982. The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Finkelstein, D. H. 2003. Expression and the Inner. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fogelin, R. J. 1994. Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Friedman, J. 2017. Why Suspend Judging?. Noûs 51(2): 302-326.
Friedman, J. 2019. Inquiry and Belief. Noûs 53(2): 296-315.
Goldberg, S. 2010. Relying on Others: An Essay in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, S. 2017. Should Have Known. Synthese 194(8): 2863-2894.
Goldberg, S. 2018. To the Best of Our Knowledge: Social Expectations and Epistemic Normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldenberg, M. J. 2021. Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Gómez Alonso, M. M. 2016. Cartesian Humility and Pyrrhonian Passivity: The Ethical Significance of Epistemic Agency. Logos and Episteme VII(4): 461-487.
Greco, D. 2012. The Impossibility of Skepticism. The Philosophical Review 121(3): 317-358.
Greco, J. 2000. The Transmission of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hume, D. 2011 [1740]. A Treatise of Human Nature. The Essential Philosophical Works. Wordsworth.
James, W. 1956 [1896]. The Will to Believe. In: The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Dover Publications.
Jeffrey, R. C. 1956. Valuation and Acceptance of Scientific Hypotheses. Philosophy of Science 33(3): 237-46.
Kelp, C. 2021. Inquiry, Knowledge, and Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kitcher, P. 1990. The Division of Cognitive Labor. The Journal of Philosophy 87(1): 5-22.
Moss, S. 2018. Probabilistic knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moran, R. 2001. Authority and Estrangement. An Essay on Self-Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Navarro, J. 2010. Scepticism, Stoicism and Subjectivity: Reappraising Montaigne’s Influence on Descartes. Contrastes (15): 243-60.
Navarro, J.; Pino, D. 2024. The Boundaries of Gnoseology. Philosophical Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02205-8.
Peels, R. 2017. Responsible Belief: a Theory in Ethics and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Perin, C. 2015. Scepticism, Suspension of Judgment, and Norms for Belief. International Journal for the Study of Scepticism 5(2): 107-125.
Piovarchy, A. 2021. What do We Want from a Theory of Epistemic Blame?. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 99(4): 791-805.
Pritchard, D. 2016. Epistemic Angst. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 96: 70-90.
Schwitzgebel, E. 2017. 1% Scepticism. Noûs 51(2): 271-290.
Simion, M. 2023. Resistance to Evidence and the Duty to Believe. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Early view.
Smart, P. 2018. Mandevillian Intelligence: From Individual Vice to Collective Virtue. In: J.A. Carter et al. (eds.), Socially-Extended Knowledge, p.253-274. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sosa, E. 2015. Judgment and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sosa, E. 2017. Epistemology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sosa, E. 2021. Epistemic Explanations: A Theory of Telic Normativity, and What It Explains. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Titelbaum, M. G. 2022. Fundamentals of Bayesian epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Way, J. 2012. Transmission and the Wrong Kind of Reason. Ethics 122(3): 489-515.
Wright, C. 1991. Scepticism and Dreaming: Imploding the Demon. Mind 100(1): 87-116.
Williams, B. 1973. Deciding to Believe. In: Problems of the Self. Philosophical Papers 1956-1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, B. 1978. Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry. New York: Penguin Books.
Williams, B. 2004. Truth and Truthfulness. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Williamson, T. 2002. Knowledge and its limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Descargas
Publicado
Número
Sección
Licencia
Derechos de autor 2026 Jesús Navarro
Esta obra está bajo una licencia internacional Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0.
Principia http://www.periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/principia/index is licenced under a Creative Commons - Atribuição-Uso Não-Comercial-Não a obras derivadas 3.0 Unported.
Base available in www.periodicos.ufsc.br.
