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Harms and Wrongs in Epistemic Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2018

Simon Barker*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Charlie Crerar*
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Trystan S. Goetze*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield

Abstract

This volume has its roots in two recent developments within mainstream analytic epistemology: a growing recognition over the past two or three decades of the active and social nature of our epistemic lives; and, more recently still, the increasing appreciation of the various ways in which the epistemic practices of individuals and societies can, and often do, go wrong. The theoretical analysis of these breakdowns in epistemic practice, along with the various harms and wrongs that follow as a consequence, constitutes an approach to epistemology that we refer to as non-ideal epistemology. In this introductory chapter we introduce and contextualise the ten essays that comprise this volume, situating them within four broad sub-fields: vice epistemology, epistemic injustice, inter-personal epistemic practices, and applied epistemology. We also provide a brief overview of several other important growth areas in non-ideal epistemology.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2018 

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References

1 The distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory in political theory is typically traced to Rawls’, John A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)Google Scholar. Mills, Charles W. offers a powerful defence of the significance of non-ideal theory within political philosophy in his ‘“Ideal Theory” as Ideology’, Hypatia 20 (2005), 165184Google Scholar.

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3 Some relatively early exceptions to virtue epistemology's focus on the positive include: Swank, Casey, ‘Epistemic Vice’, in Axtell, Guy (ed.) Knowledge, Belief, and Character: Readings in Contemporary Virtue Epistemology (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 195204Google Scholar; Fricker, Miranda, Epistemic Injustice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For discussion of why vice has been overlooked in the virtue epistemological literature, see Charlie Crerar, ‘Motivational Approaches to Intellectual Vice’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy (Forthcoming).

4 A further, arguably related, non-ideal approach to virtue epistemology is represented by the situationist challenge, which employs psychological evidence to argue that true epistemic virtues are, in fact, vanishingly rare. See, for example, Alfano, Mark, Character as Moral Fiction (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Olin, Lauren and Dorris, John M., ‘Vicious Minds’, Philosophical Studies 168 (2014), 665692CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fairweather, Abrol and Alfano, Mark (eds.), Epistemic Situationism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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26 Hanna Gunn and Michael P. Lynch, ‘Google Epistemology’, in David Coady (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Applied Epistemology (New York: Routledge, Forthcoming); Heersmink, Richard, ‘A Virtue Epistemology of the Internet’, Social Epistemology 32 (2018), 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Rini, Regina, ‘Fake News and Partisan Epistemology’, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 27 (2017) 4364CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelfert, AxelFake News: A Definition’, Informal Logic 38 (2018), 84117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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