Veli Mitova

Knowledge brokers, usually conceptualized as passive intermediaries between scientists and policymakers in evidence-based policymaking, are understudied in philosophy of science. Here, we challenge that usual conceptualization. As agents in their own right, knowledge brokers have their own goals and incentives, which complicate the effects of their presence at the science-policy interface. We illustrate this in an agent-based model and suggest several avenues for further exploration of the role of knowledge brokers in evidence-based policy.

Philosophers have argued that stakes affect knowledge: a given amount of evidence may suffice for knowledge if the stakes are low, but not if the stakes are high. By contrast, empirical work on the influence of stakes on ordinary knowledge ascriptions has been divided along methodological lines: “evidence‐fixed” prompts rarely find stakes effects, while “evidence‐seeking” prompts consistently find them. We present a cross‐cultural study using both evidence‐fixed and evidence‐seeking prompts with a diverse sample of 17 populations in 11 countries, speaking 14 languages. Our study is the first to use an evidence‐seeking prompt cross‐culturally, and includes several previously untested populations (including indigenous populations). Across cultures, we do not find evidence of a stakes effect with our evidence‐fixed prompt, but do with our evidence‐seeking prompt. We argue that the divergent results reveal a tension within folk epistemology: people's beliefs about when it is appropriate to ascribe knowledge differ significantly from their actual practice in ascribing knowledge.

When evidence‑based policymaking is so often mired in disagreement and controversy, how can we know if the process is meeting its stated goals? We develop a novel mathematical model to study disagreements about adequate knowledge utilization, like those regarding wild horse culling, shark drumlines and facemask policies during pandemics. We find that, when stakeholders disagree, it is frequently impossible to tell whether any party is at fault. We demonstrate the need for a distinctive kind of transparency in evidence‑based policymaking, which we call transparency of reasoning. Such transparency is critical to the success of the evidence‑based policy movement, as without it, we will be unable to tell whether in any instance a policy was in fact based on evidence.

Whether or not any particular policy is adequate by EBP's own standard—being evidence‐based—cannot be decided without appeal to value‐based considerations. We support this claim in two steps. First, we argue that which evidence gets used in policy‐making depends on our value commitments, which are rarely made explicit, let alone being the subject of critical and transparent reflection. In other words, value commitments are not just important at the point of spelling out specific policy details and choosing between policy options but they are absolutely essential right from the very beginning of the policy‐making process: all the way from deciding which problem should be addressed by policy or regulation to determining which evidence to use and where to look for it. Second, in order to determine when we have enough evidence, we need to take into account relevant value‐based considerations.

Whether or not any particular policy is adequate by EBP's own standard—being evidence-based—cannot be decided without appeal to value-based considerations. We support this claim in two steps. First, we argue that which evidence gets used in policy-making depends on our value commitments, which are rarely made explicit, let alone being the subject of critical and transparent reflection. In other words, value commitments are not just important at the point of spelling out specific policy details and choos¬ing between policy options but they are absolutely essential right from the very beginning of the policy-making process: all the way from deciding which problem should be addressed by policy or regulation to determining which evidence to use and where to look for it. Second, in order to determine when we have enough evidence, we need to take into account relevant value-based considerations.

This introduction reflects on the papers in the Special Issue under five broad themes—Theoretical Frameworks for Epistemic Reparations; Structural Epistemic Wrongs and Reparations; Hostile Contexts and Epistemic Agency; The Right to Be Known and the Duty to Bear Witness; and Applying the Epistemic Reparations Framework. Any grouping of such a rich tapestry of papers is bound to be somewhat artificial. So, the aim here is not to reduce each paper to a single theme, but rather to show off the richness of the epistemic reparations landscape, and to highlight the papers’ potential for expanding it beyond its current boundaries.

The ethics of belief is concerned with what we should believe. This paper is on the ethics of conspiracy belief: should we sometimes believe in conspiracy theories? In the first part, we discuss whether conspiracy theorists are responsible for their beliefs. We argue that they are. Conspiracy beliefs are subject to robust epistemic evaluations since they can be sufficiently responsive to epistemic reasons, thus differing from paradigmatic delusions. In the second part, we consider the epistemic rationality of conspiracy belief. We claim that someone who has reasons to distrust existing authorities (members of marginalized groups are prime examples) can rationally believe in conspiracy theories. To defend this claim, we spell out a mechanism that leads from rational distrust to rational conspiracy belief. We build on insights about the nature of rationality, the social nature of knowledge, and knowledge from the internet. Finally, we consider specific epistemic harms of conspiracy theories. We argue that these harms can render conspiracy beliefs unjustified while not infringing on their rationality. This allows us to carve out an interesting subclass of beliefs in conspiracy theories that are worthy of philosophical and scientific attention: conspiracy beliefs that are rational yet unjustified. We thereby intend to push the debate to more epistemically nuanced evaluations.

The notion of epistemic reparations has recently gained increasing attention in social epistemology. These are reparations due to victims of distinctively epistemic wrongs attaching to gross human rights violations. An example of such a wrong is not having the true story about yourself known due to being wrongfully convicted of murder (Lackey, 2022). In the last few years, several authors have proposed accounts of epistemic reparations under various labels (Almassi, 2018; Lackey, 2022; Hull, 2022; Song, 2021). Although these views gesture at structural ways in which victims can be wronged, we do not yet have an account of how accepting this structural dimension might introduce distinctive features or difficulties for the notion of epistemic reparations. In this paper, I argue that certain structural wrongs, such as the epistemic wrongs of colonialism, turn out to be irreparable on the existing backward-looking epistemic reparations framework. A more promising model for redressing such injustices, I argue, is Iris Marion Young’s social connection model, supplemented by some tools from the group responsibility literature. The arguments bring into dialogue three bodies of scholarship that are currently not talking to each other—on epistemic reparations, structural injustice, and collective agency. This dialogue will not only be of mutual theoretical benefit to all three but will also up our chances of attaining epistemic justice.

ABSTRACT According to a recent proposal by Cameron Boult, epistemic blame is best understood as a modification of one's epistemic relationship with the blamee. This ‘relationship modification account’ (RMA) has many welcome theoretical consequences for social epistemology. For instance, it gives us new tools for analysing cases of testimonial injustice, epistemic exploitation, and gaslighting. In this paper, I extend RMA to other kinds of epistemic injustice. I first identify a gap in RMA: while it does well with testimonial kinds of injustice, I argue, it has no obvious way of handling hermeneutical kinds, such as contributory injustice or active ignorance. To fill this gap, I argue further, we need the notion of hermeneutical relationships. Once we have this notion, I finally argue, we have a unified RMA-style tool for diagnosing epistemic injustices as well as for countering independent worries about deference to marginalised knowers.

Determining appropriate mechanisms for transferring and translating research into policy has become a major concern for researchers (knowledge producers) and policymakers (knowledge users) worldwide. This has led to the emergence of a new function of brokering between researchers and policymakers, and a new type of agent called Knowledge Broker. Understanding these complex multi-agent interactions is critical for an efficient knowledge brokering practice during any given policymaking process. Here, we present (1) the current diversity of knowledge broker groups working in the field of biosecurity and environmental management; (2) the incentives linking the different agents involved in the process (knowledge producers, knowledge brokers and knowledge users); and (3) the gaps, needs and challenges to better understand this social ecosystem. We also propose alternatives aimed at improving transparency and efficiency, including future scenarios where the role of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies may become predominant in knowledge-brokering activities.

According to the standard story, all motivated beliefs are epistemically blameworthy, because they are formed with an eye to practical benefit, rather than for the right—epistemic—reasons. Recently, Lisa Bortolotti has argued that, contra this story, some motivated beliefs are epistemically innocent. In this paper, I argue for two claims. First, Bortolotti’s account has the unfortunate implication that some paradigms of epistemically unjust belief are epistemically innocent. My central case are beliefs formed in (what Charles Mills calls) white ignorance. Second, adding a communitarian condition to Bortolotti’s account avoids the implication that these beliefs are innocent, while honouring some of her plausible insights. The insight of greatest relevance to the special issue is this. Bortolotti’s view allows us to think of beliefs’ epistemic goodness in ways that ‘go beyond the evidence’—ways in which believing for nonevidential reasons can promote important epistemic goods. My communitarian proposal retains this insight, but has the additional virtue of not counting as innocent epistemic benefits obtained at the expense of other members of the epistemic community.

According to a recent move in social epistemology, certain types of epistemic wrongs require distinctively epistemic reparations. For instance, if you have been wrongfully convicted of murder, you have not only the right to various kinds of economic and social reparations but also the ‘right to be known’ (Lackey 2022) – crudely, the right to tell the true story about yourself and be listened to. In this paper, I extend this framework to the context of epistemic decolonisation. I argue that the key decolonial epistemic reparations are reparations for the undermined epistemic authority of the colonised. I call these ‘decolonial epistemic authority reparations’ and develop five constraints on a plausible account of them. If the argument is compelling, it will advance both the epistemic reparations framework (which does not talk to the decolonisation literature at present) and the project of epistemic decolonisation (which does not yet canvass epistemic reparations).

According to a recent argument, we should de-idealise analytic epistemology: when theorising our epistemic practices and obligations, we should stop abstracting away epistemically relevant features of knowers, such as their social identities. This paper puts in dialogue two apparently unrelated arguments for non-ideal epistemology – McKenna (2023) and Basu (2023) – focusing on the obligation to engage with challenges to our beliefs. I argue that while these are welcome first steps towards de-idealisation, we need to de-idealise further by acknowledging the role that groups (of a very peculiar kind) play in arguments for de-idealising. Many of the things we want to say about knowers in a non-ideal epistemology, I show, turn on these knowers’ group membership and the epistemic authority ascribed to their group. Acknowledging this incurs the burden of theorising such groups. Accepting this burden, I aim to show, is both necessary and worthwhile for a fully non-ideal epistemology.

When evidence-based policymaking is so often mired in disagreement and controversy, how can we know if the process is meeting its stated goals? We develop a novel mathematical model to study disagreements about adequate knowledge utilization, like those regarding wild horse culling, shark drumlines and facemask policies during pandemics. We find that, when stakeholders disagree, it is frequently impossible to tell whether any party is at fault. We demonstrate the need for a distinctive kind of transparency in evidence-based policymaking, which we call transparency of reasoning. Such transparency is critical to the success of the evidence-based policy movement, as without it, we will be unable to tell whether in any instance a policy was in fact based on evidence.

According to moral encroachers, the moral stakes of a belief partly determine how much evidence we need for the belief to count as knowledge. This view concerns the beliefs of individual believers. In this paper, I argue for a social group version of moral encroachment: dominant groups, such as white people or men, need to have more evidence than the marginalised in order for some of their beliefs to constitute knowledge. I argue for this claim in three steps. First, I spell out the group moral stakes involved – the harms dominant knowers cause the marginalised and the knowledge economy. Second, I show off the theoretical benefits of having the notion of social group moral encroachment at our disposal: it can be an invaluable tool for decolonial and feminist epistemologists if they want to avoid the relativistic ring to their views (a ring that tends to put off many well-wishers). Finally, I start on a positive account of social group moral encroachment by addressing a potential puzzle and responding to objections.

The paper argues that some tools from the epistemic injustice literature can be fruitfully applied to the debate on epistemic decolonisation. The first step for such a project is to defuse recent misgivings about the liberatory potential of epistemic injustice scholarship. I group these misgivings under the slogan ‘Epistemic injustice is white-people stuff’, or ‘the WPS challenge’, for short, and use them to set desiderata for good theorising with epistemic injustice tools. I then look at three such tools – epistemic oppression, white ignorance, and contributory injustice – and argue that they advance theorising epistemic decolonisation while meeting the three desiderata. If the argument works, its implications for the topic of this special issue are that we don’t need to decolonise epistemic injustice; we can instead use the tools of the epistemic injustice literature to advance the decolonisation project.

Epistemic risk is of central importance to epistemology nowadays: one common way in which a belief can fail to be knowledge is by being formed in an epistemically risky way, that is, a way that makes it true by luck. Recently, epistemologists have been expanding this rather narrow conception of risk in every direction, except arguably the most obvious one—to enable it to accommodate the increasingly commonplace thought that knowledge has an irreducibly social dimension. This paper fills this lacuna by bringing issues of epistemic injustice to bear on epistemic risk. In particular, it draws on the phenomenon of white ignorance, to sketch a more social notion of epistemic risk, on which the interests of one's epistemic community partly determine whether a belief‐forming procedure is epistemically risky.

When you believe something for a good reason, your belief is in a position to be justified, rational, responsible, or to count as knowledge. But what is the nature of this thing that can make such a difference? Traditionally, epistemologists thought of epistemic normative notions, such as reasons, in terms of the believer's psychological perspective. Recently, however, many have started thinking of them as factive: good reasons for belief are either facts, veridical experiences, or known propositions. This ground breaking volume reflects major recent developments in thinking about this 'Factive Turn', and advances the lively debate around it in relation to core epistemological themes including perception, evidence, justification, knowledge, scepticism, rationality, and action. With clear and comprehensive chapters written by leading figures in the field, this book will be essential for students and scholars looking to engage with the state of the art in epistemology.

The call to decolonise knowledge is gaining increasing popularity in African philosophy. But as scholarly attention to the topic intensifies, so do doubts about the usefulness of theorising it, especially in spaces – like Africa – that are riddled with deeper problems such as mass poverty and social disempowerment. I focus on three challenges that Bernard Matolino has recently issued. If these challenges are on the right track, they threaten to derail the whole project of epistemic decolonisation worldwide, since many of the aspects of Africa that Matolino thinks make decolonial theorising unhelpful are shared by the rest of the Global South. In this paper, I develop a conception of epistemic decolonisation that is geared to withstanding such doubts in the contemporary African context, and can hopefully serve others in the Global South who share some of Africa’s problems.

Many influential philosophers have claimed that truth is valuable, indeed so valuable as to be the ultimate standard of correctness for intellectual activity. Yet most philosophers also think that truth is only instrumentally valuable. These commitments make for a strange pair. One would have thought that an ultimate standard would enjoy more than just instrumental value. This paper develops a new argument for the non-instrumental value of truth: (1) inquiry is non-instrumentally valuable; and (2) truth inherits some of its value from the value of inquiry. This makes truth finally but extrinsically valuable, a thesis that to my knowledge has not been directly defended in the literature. I support (1) by appeal to the notion of epistemic injustice, and (2) through the surprising claim that some goals get their value from the pursuit that aims at them.

The topic of epistemic decolonisation is currently the locus of lively debate both in academia and in everyday life. The aim of this piece is to isolate a few main strands in the philosophical literature on the topic, and draw some new connections amongst them through the lens of epistemic injustice. I first sketch what I take to be the core features of epistemic decolonisation. I then philosophically situate the topic. Finally, I map it in relation to key epistemic-injustice concepts and to the contributions in this special issue.

What is going on when we explain someone’s belief by appeal to stereotypes associated with her gender, sexuality, race, or class? In this paper I try to motivate two claims. First, such explanations involve an overlooked form of epistemic injustice, which I call ‘explanatory injustice’. Second, the language of reasons helps us shed light on the ways in which such injustice wrongs the victim qua epistemic agent. In particular, explanatory injustice is best understood as occurring in explanations of belief through a so-called reason-why when the correct explanation in fact features a motivating reason. I reach this conclusion by arguing that such explanations are a kind of normative inversion of confabulation. Thinking in these terms helps us see both how certain reason-ascriptions empower while others disempower, and (consequently) how through them believers are robbed of agency over their beliefs.

Believable Evidence argues that evidence consists of true beliefs. This claim opens up an entirely overlooked space on the ontology of evidence map, between purely factualist positions and purely psychologist ones. Veli Mitova provides a compelling three-level defence of this view in the first contemporary monograph entirely devoted to the ontology of evidence. First, once we see the evidence as a good reason, metaethical considerations show that the evidence must be psychological and veridical. Second, true belief in particular allows epistemologists to have everything they want from the concept of evidence. Finally, the view helps us locate the source of the normative authority of evidence. The book challenges a broad range of current views on the ontology of reasons and their normative authority, making it a must-read for scholars and advanced students in metaethics and epistemology.