Abstract
In a recent paper in this journal, Joshua Blanchard has identified a novel problem: the problem of unwelcome epistemic company. We find ourselves in unwelcome epistemic company when we hold a belief that is also held mainly or most prominently by those we regard as morally or epistemically bad. Blanchard argues that some, but not all, unwelcome epistemic company provides higher-order evidence against our belief. But he doesn't provide a test for when company is unwelcome or a diagnosis of why it is unwelcome. I provide both. On my disjunctive test, unwelcome epistemic company provides us with a defeater when either there is a match between the content of the belief and the properties that make our company unwelcome, or there is reason to suspect that the belief arose via a shared, unreliable, causal process.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 101-106 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Episteme |
Volume | 20 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 23 Dec 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2023 |
Keywords
- agreement
- defeaters
- disagreement
- higher-order evidence