Anne Meylan

A traditional view holds that ignorance is simply the absence of knowledge. This view has recently been challenged by the Normative Account, which sees ignorance as involving a normative failure. In this paper, we argue that both perspectives capture important insights. Drawing on three empirical studies, we propose a two-senses account of ignorance, according to which there exist two notions of ignorance: one normative, the other non-normative. We also offer a new explanation of the normative aspect. Our findings suggest that what is negative in being ignorant lies in the expectation that one ought to know the relevant fact.

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.

Among the requirements essential to the proper pursuit of our intellectual endeavours, there is the requirement to seek additional evidential reasons beyond those that one currently possesses when one asks oneself a question. The aim of this paper is to explore the nature of this ‘questioning requirement’ in greater detail. After considering and dismissing accounts that take the questioning requirement to be either a practical or an epistemic requirement, I put forward my own view, which holds that the questioning requirement arises from the very nature of the illocutionary act of self-questioning. Just as the illocutionary act of promising generates obligations, asking oneself a question generates a requirement to seek evidential reasons to answer the question one has posed.

A traditional view holds that ignorance is simply the absence of knowledge. This view has recently been challenged by the Normative Account, which sees ignorance as involving a normative failure. In this paper, we argue that both perspectives capture important insights. Drawing on three empirical studies, we propose a two-senses account of ignorance, according to which there exist two notions of ignorance: one normative, the other non-normative. We also offer a new explanation of the normative aspect. Our findings suggest that what is negative in being ignorant lies in the expectation that one ought to know the relevant fact.

We are occasionally responsible for our beliefs. But is this doxastic responsibility analogous to any non‐attitudinal form of responsibility? What I shall call the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility holds that the kind of responsibility that we have for our beliefs is indeed analogous to the kind of responsibility that we have for the consequences of our actions. This article does two things, both with the aim of defending this somewhat unsophisticated but intuitive view of doxastic responsibility. First, it emphasizes the advantage of preserving, as the consequential conception does, the analogy with the non‐attitudinal realm, i.e., with the realm of actions and their consequences. Second, this article regiments the most important objections to the consequential conception and answers them. The upshot is that there are no serious drawbacks to the consequential conception. There is, therefore, no reason not to favour it over accounts of doxastic responsibility that do not preserve the analogy with the non‐attitudinal realm.

Situations where it is not obvious which of two incompatible actions we ought to perform are commonplace. As has frequently been noted in the contemporary literature, a similar issue seems to arise in the field of beliefs. Cases of doxastic divergence are cases in which the subject seems subject to two divergent oughts to believe: an epistemic and a practical ought to believe. This article supports the moderate pragmatist view according to which subjects ought, all things considered, to hold the practically right belief in, at least, some cases of doxastic divergence. Unlike many defences of pragmatism, this paper does not aim to overcome exclusivism (briefly, the view that only epistemic, but not practical, considerations have an influence on what a subject ought to believe). Another major challenge that pragmatism faces is to show that the epistemic and the practical ought to believe are comparable. This article makes a case for their comparability.

Ce chapitre discute de la justification des croyances testimoniales, c’est-à-dire de la justification des croyances que nous adoptons en nous appuyant sur le témoignage d’autrui. Plus précisément, la question à laquelle cette contribution s’intéresse est celle des conditions nécessaires et suffisantes de la justification des croyances testimoniales. Il y a deux manières classiques, et soi-disant antagonistes, d’y répondre: la réponse réductionnisme et la réponse non-réductionniste. L’objectif de ce chapitre est d’une part de présenter ces deux réponses, d’autre part, d’expliquer pourquoi ce prétendu antagonisme n’en est pas un. Le plan est le suivant. La première partie de ce chapitre est consacrée à distinguer les croyances testimoniales des croyances perceptuelles (section 1. et 1.1). Dans la seconde partie (section 2 à 2.3), nous présentons la réponse réductionniste et la réponse non-réductionniste ainsi que quelques-unes des objections les plus importantes adressées à chacune d’elles. La troisième partie explique pourquoi le prétendu antagonisme entre le réductionnisme et le non-réductionnisme n’en est pas un en exploitant ce que nous appelons « la thèse du malentendu » (3 à 3.2).

According to a classical view, suspension of judgement is, like belief and disbelief, a cognitive state. However, as some authors (Crawford 2022; Lord 2020; McGrath 2021a, 2021b; Sosa 2019, 2021) have pointed out, to suspend judgement is also to perform a certain mental action. The main goal of this article is to defend a precise account of the action that we take when we suspend our judgement: the Preventing Account. The Preventing Account has both the advantage of (i) accounting for familiar situations in which subjects suspend judgements and (ii) of explaining the tendency, which is widespread in the philosophical tradition (from sceptics to pragmatists), to consider suspension of judgement as something that is (at least, to some degree) difficult to achieve.

In the recent epistemological literature much has been written about the nature of suspending judgement or agnosticism. There has also been a surge of recent interest in the nature of ignorance. But what is the relationship between these two epistemically significant states? Prima facie, both suspension and ignorance seem to involve the lack of a correct answer to a question. And, again prima facie, there may be some intuitive attraction to the idea that when one is ignorant whether p, one ought to suspend judgement whether p. In this paper we will explore a range of different possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension of judgement. We will also discuss how both ignorance and suspension are related to having inconclusive evidence. As we will see, the issues can become quite complex due to the fact that there are different, competing views about the nature of ignorance and also about the nature of suspension. Moreover, there are importantly different kinds of epistemic norms. Our overall aim then will be to systematically chart how these different choices will impact the possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension.

That we have practical reasons to believe certain propositions even if sceptical arguments are cogent is nothing new. As Hume puts it, if sceptical principles were steadily accepted, “men would remain in a total lethargy until their miserable lives came to an end through lack of food, drink and shelter.” (Enquiry, 12, 2). This heart-breaking projection fails to move contemporary epistemologists who, for the most part, brush off pragmatist stances on scepticism. In this paper, I argue that the pragmatist stance on scepticism is not necessarily as easily brushed off as some philosophers think.

While buck-passing accounts are widely discussed in the literature, there have been surprisingly few attempts to apply buck-passing analyses to specific normative domains such as aesthetics and epistemology. In particular, there have been very few works which have tried to provide complete and detailed buck-passing analyses of epistemic values and norms. These analyses are, however, both interesting and important. On the one hand, they can bring to the surface the advantages and difficulties of extending the buck-passing account to specific normative spheres, either providing further support for the approach or highlighting substantive difficulties. On the other hand, epistemic buck-passing analyses can be beneficial for normative epistemology, providing new perspectives on traditional epistemological problems, and possibly providing fresh approaches to such problems. This paper aims at partially filling this gap.

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate.

It is commonly accepted – not only in the philosophical literature but also in daily life – that ignorance is a failure of some sort. As a result, a desideratum of any ontological account of ignorance is that it must be able to explain why there is something wrong with being ignorant of a true proposition. This article shows two things. First, two influential accounts of ignorance – the Knowledge Account and the True Belief Account – do not satisfy this requirement. They fail to provide a satisfying normative account of the badness of ignorance. Second, this article suggests an alternative explanation of what makes ignorance a bad cognitive state. In a nutshell, ignorance is bad because it is the manifestation of a vice, namely, of what Cassam calls “epistemic insouciance”.

Many philosophers have defended the view that we are subject to the following evidential ought: “One ought to believe in accordance with one's evidence.” Although they agree on this, a more fundamental question keeps dividing them: from where does the evidential ought derive its normative force? The instrinsicalist answer to this question is sometimes described as the claim that "there is a brute epistemic value in believing in accordance with one's evidence" (Cowie, 2014, 4005). But what does this really mean? Intrinsicalists' negative claim is that the normative source of the evidential ought has nothing to do with the fulfilment of our epistemic purposes. But what is their positive claim exactly? This paper aims at improving our understanding of intrinsicalism. Its conclusion is that there is only one possible way of being an intrinsicalist. Intrinsicalists need to be constitutivists.

Situations where it is not obvious which of two incompatible actions we ought to perform are commonplace. As has frequently been noted in the contemporary literature, a similar issue seems to arise in the field of beliefs. Cases of doxastic divergence are cases in which the subject seems subject to two divergent oughts to believe: an epistemic and a practical ought to believe. This article supports the moderate pragmatist view according to which subjects ought, all things considered, to hold the practically right belief in, at least, some cases of doxastic divergence. Unlike many defences of pragmatism, this paper does not aim to overcome exclusivism (briefly, the view that only epistemic, but not practical, considerations have an influence on what a subject ought to believe). Another major challenge that pragmatism faces is to show that the epistemic and the practical ought to believe are comparable. This article makes a case for their comparability.

This article argues that “justification” denotes distinct technical properties in contemporary epistemology. It is structured as follows. Section 1 spells out a distinction between two ways of tackling the traditional question: “what is a justified belief?”. Sections 2 and 3 exploit some of the upshots of section 1 in order to show that classical reliabilism, accessibilism and presumably many other accounts of justification use the predicate “justified” in distinct technical ways. As we shall see, the careful vindication of the latter claim turns out to be a complex matter.

According to Sosa’s virtue epistemological account, an instance of (animal) knowledge is a belief that instantiates the property of being apt. The purpose of this contribution is, first, to show why this claim is, without further clarification, problematic. Briefly, an instance of knowledge cannot be identified to an apt belief because beliefs are states and aptness is a property that only actions —and no states— can exemplify. Second, I present the metaphysical amendment that the tenants of virtue epistemology can adopt in order to avoid this objection. This conducts me to suggest a new, metaphysically sounder version of the virtue epistemological account of knowledge in which knowledge is extrinsically apt belief.