Jason Kawall

I present an account of epistemic autonomy as a distinctively wide-ranging epistemic virtue, one that helps us to understand a range of phenomena that might otherwise seem quite disparate – from the appropriate selection of epistemic methods, stances and topics of inquiry, to the harms of epistemic oppression, gaslighting and related phenomena. The account draws on four elements commonly incorporated into accounts of personal autonomy: (i) self-governance, (ii) authenticity, (iii) self-creation and (iv) independence. I further argue that for a distinctively epistemic virtue of autonomy; the above elements must ultimately reliably lead to valuable epistemic goods (for the agent herself and others). I then turn to the domains or ways in which epistemic autonomy so understood, can be made manifest. I suggest that epistemic autonomy is a virtue that allows us to appropriately choose (i) subject matters and areas of inquiry, (ii) methods, sources, and processes of belief formation, (iii) epistemic goals and (iv) epistemic stances or frameworks. So understood, epistemic autonomy has a role to play in shaping most every aspect of our epistemic lives.

To reliably choose morally sound policies, whether as a society or as an individual, will typically require a deep and wide-ranging base of relevant knowledge. In this paper I consider the epistemic demands for morally sound action and policy in the Anthropocene age. I argue that these demands are likely to be unsatisfied, leading to a potential downward spiral of ineffective action in the face of worsening conditions; this seems a strong possibility both for individual lives, and for societies as a whole. Given the likely scale of ignorance in the face of rapid, poorly-understood change, the best efforts of future generations to act morally may often be little more than guesses, with a far lower chance of success than in more stable conditions. If moral failures mount, and conditions continue to deteriorate, our epistemic efforts seem likely to be pressured and subject to various biases, leading to further errors and failures. Our ability to live virtuously and to act rightly is likely to be put under severe strain in the Anthropocene. Our approach to ethics will likely need to change to the extent that, for a wide range of cases, we will not know what the right action to perform will be; we will typically be acting without such moral knowledge. Instead, we must come to expect to merely act non-culpably at best, with many errors and false starts along the way. The final section of my paper addresses ways in which we might attempt to address or mitigate these worries.

In response to prominent criticisms of virtue ethical accounts of right action, Daniel Russell has argued that these criticisms are misguided insofar as they rest on an incorrect understanding of what virtue ethicists mean by ‘right action’, drawing on Rosalind Hursthouse’s influential account of the term. Liezl van Zyl has explored, though not fully-endorsed, a similar approach. The response holds that virtue ethicists do not embrace a strong connection between (i) right action and (ii) what any given agent ought to do in a given set of circumstances. Rather, ‘right action’ is a matter of action assessment, and indicates that a given action is morally excellent and praiseworthy. More generally, the proposed account of rightness emphasizes both (i) an agent’s past and how she came to be in certain circumstances - is it a result of her own vice or wrong actions? and (ii) the agent’s own future happiness and well-being - will an action be so terrible that her life is marred and ruined? The narrative structure of an agent’s life thus plays a significant role in determining whether an action is right. This revisionary conception of right action is the focus of the current chapter.

It is generally acknowledged that testifiers can play a central role in the production of knowledge and other valuable epistemic states in others. But does such a role warrant any form of epistemic credit and is an agent more successful qua epistemic agent insofar as she is a successful testifier? I here propose an affirmative answer to both questions. The core of the current paper consists in a sustained defence of this proposal against a series of objections. I further argue that the proposal allows us to recognize an important additional epistemic harm that arises in cases of testimonial injustice beyond those described by Miranda Fricker. Finally, I conclude by distinguishing between four kinds of credit - distinctions that allow us to avoid inappropriately attributing epistemic credit in problematic cases. If the current proposal is correct, our understanding of successful epistemic agents needs to be significantly modified in order to take into account their role in producing epistemically valuable states in others.

Despite projected devastating impacts on human communities, the US still lacks comprehensive national policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This vacuum has provided the space for a surge of promising sustainability and climate action planning efforts at the state and local level. Meanwhile, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (2015) Out of Reach Report, ‘there is no state in the US where a minimum wage worker working full time can afford a one-bedroom apartment at the fair market rent’. We are calling for a reimagining of local climate action planning that encourages policies and programs designed to reduce GHG emissions from the built environment while explicitly and comprehensively addressing the affordability component. With equitable local climate action planning, we can address both environmental and social justice issues.

The central claim of this dissertation is that the most plausible form of virtue theory will incorporate a number of features from an ideal observer theory, and vice versa. Virtue theorists in ethics and epistemology often characterize the virtues as those traits required for a good human life, and right action in terms of the behaviour of virtuous persons. I argue that while such positions are mistaken , a related form of ideal observer theory can capture the virtue theorists' insights. The core of my dissertation lies in developing a unified metaethical/epistemological/aesthetic theory which grounds normative properties in the judgements of ideal observers. Thus, for example, an action is morally right if and only if a virtuous ideal observer would declare it to be so. These ideal observers are identified by their possession of characteristics considered ideal by a class of semi-ideal observers, who are in turn identified by their possession of traits considered ideal by psychologically healthy humans. ;Instead of appealing to human nature, we make direct appeal to our ideals---the factors which give human nature theories much of their initial plausibility. On the other hand, our ideals reflect our human needs, our way of life, etc. They are grounded in human nature and thus of interest to us, capturing a further insight from human nature theory. Like standard ideal observer theories we arrive at a metatheory which provides an attractive blend of cognitivism, while avoiding commitment to 'queer' normative facts in the world. But the ideal observers we appeal to are much more fully characterized than standard ideal observers---their characteristics are grounded in human ideals, thus providing a basis for the judgements of the ideal observers, and providing us with reason to abide by their judgements. I motivate and develop this procedure for deriving ideal observers, consider objections to the approach, and show how the theory improves upon traditional virtue and ideal observer theories

: In this paper I attempt to defuse a set of epistemic worries commonly raised against ideal observer theories. The worries arise because of the omniscience often attributed to ideal observers – how can we, as finite humans, ever have access to the moral judgements or reactions of omniscient beings? I argue that many of the same concerns arise with respect to other moral theories (and that these concerns do not in fact reveal genuine flaws in any of these theories), and further, that we can and often do have knowledge of the reactions of ideal observers (according to standard, prominent theories in the domain of epistemology).

A response to Christopher Preston's book "Grounding Knowledge" (2003). I first argue that Preston’s work strongly suggests that epistemologists would do well to re-examine and pay greater attention to ‘knowledge how’. Second, I briefly consider several of Preston’s proposals (concerning the importance of place to our cognitive lives) through the lens of contemporary virtue epistemology and suggest how Preston’s work might inform and shape theorizing in this area. Finally, I turn to a set of potential questions for Preston, focusing in particular on his proposal that we ought to preserve a wide range of places inorder to allow for an epistemically valuable cognitive diversity.

I argue that recent virtue theories (including those of Hursthouse, Slote, and Swanton) face important initial difficulties in accommodating the supererogatory. In particular, I consider several potential characterizations of the supererogatory modeled upon these familiar virtue theories (and their accounts of rightness) and argue that they fail to provide an adequate account of supererogation. In the second half of the paper I sketch an alternative virtue-based characterization of supererogation, one that is grounded in the attitudes of virtuous ideal observers, and that avoids the concerns raised in the first part of the paper.

It is argued that Nozick's experience machine thought experiment does not pose a particular difficulty for mental state theories of well-being. While the example shows that we value many things beyond our mental states, this simply reflects the fact that we value more than our own well-being. Nor is a mental state theorist forced to make the dubious claim that we maintain these other values simply as a means to desirable mental states. Valuing more than our mental states is compatible with maintaining that the impact of such values upon our well-being lies in their impact upon our mental lives.

In this paper I argue (i) that choosing to abide by realist moral norms would be as arbitrary as choosing to abide by the mere preferences of a God (a difficulty akin to the Euthyphro dilemma raised for divine command theorists); in both cases we would lack reason to prefer these standards to alternative codes of conduct. I further develop this general line of thought by arguing in particular (ii) that we would lack any noncircular justification to concern ourselves with any such realist normative standards.

My central thesis is that philosophers considering questions of epistemic value ought to devote greater attention to the enduring nature of beliefs. I begin by arguing that a commonly drawn analogy between beliefs and actions is flawed in important respects, and that a better, more fruitful analogue for belief would be desire, or a similarly enduring state of an agent. With this in hand, I argue that treating beliefs as enduring, constitutive states of agents allows us to capture the importance of accessible, justified, and true beliefs to sustaining personal identity, autonomy, self-control, and authenticity. We thus arrive at a significant value to such beliefs through their crucial role in our personal, practical identities.

Epistemologists often assume that an agent’s epistemic goal is simply to acquire as much knowledge as possible for herself. Drawing on an analogy with ethics and other practices, I argue that being situated in an epistemic community introduces a range of epistemic virtues (and goals) which fall outside of those typically recognized by both individualistic and social epistemologists. Candidate virtues include such traits as honesty, integrity (including an unwillingness to misuse one’s status as an expert), patience, and creativity. We can understand such traits to be epistemic virtues insofar as they tend to produce knowledge – not for the agent alone, but for her community. Recognition of such ‘otherregarding epistemic virtues’ both broadens the area of inquiry of epistemology, and introduces new standards for the evaluation of epistemic agents.

Simon Keller and Sarah Stroud have both argued that the demands of being a good friend can conflict with the demands of standard epistemic norms. Intuitively, good friends will tend to seek favorable interpretations of their friends’ behaviors, interpretations that they would not apply to strangers; as such they seem prone to form unjustified beliefs. I argue that there is no such clash of norms. In particular, I argue that friendship does not require us to form beliefs about our friends in the biased fashion suggested by Stroud and Keller. I further argue that while some slight bias in belief-formation might be permitted by friendship, any such bias would fall within the bounds of epistemic propriety.

Moral response-dependent metaethical theories characterize moral properties in terms of the reactions of certain classes of individuals. Nick Zangwill has argued that such theories are flawed: they are unable to accommodate the motive of duty. That is, they are unable to provide a suitable reason for anyone to perform morally right actions simply because they are morally right. I argue that Zangwill ignores significant differences between various approvals, and various individuals, and that moral response-dependent theories can accommodate the motive of duty.