Julianne Chung

Deference in politics is often necessary. To answer questions like, “Should the government increase the federal minimum wage?” and “Should the state introduce a vaccine mandate?,” we need to know relevant scientific and economic facts, make complex value judgments, and answer questions about incentives and implementation. Lay citizens typically lack the time, resources, and competence to answer these questions on their own. Hence, they must defer to others. But to whom should they defer? A common answer is that they should—or are at least permitted to—defer to co-partisans. This view initially seems attractive on both normative and empirical grounds. Against this, the author argues that deference to co-partisans has overlooked moral and epistemic problems. In light of them, the author proposes several new ways to revise our expectations of citizens in a democracy, both individually and institutionally.

The author defines and analyzes a practice central to inquiry: treating things as relevant to questions. This notion helps illuminate what lines of inquiry are, how those lines unfold, and how to evaluate them. When applied to the context of news journalism, we can use the notion of lines of inquiry to understand how questions get built into frames that give shape to news stories. Armed with this concept, we can then better understand the roles of lines of inquiry in journalism, and see more clearly how to evaluate news stories not just by fact-checking, but also by considering which facts should be selected to build a story to begin with.

Moral encroachers claim that the moral risks of falsely believing something raise the threshold of epistemic justification, thereby making justification and knowledge harder to come by. Leary argues that there’s a tension between moral encroachment and #BelieveWomen: there are certain paradigm cases involving rape reports about which most proponents of #BelieveWomen would agree that the hearers in these cases are justified in believing the accusation, but moral encroachment suggests they are not. This tension cannot be easily avoided by claiming, as some encroachers do, that the moral risks of not believing the accusation lower the threshold of epistemic justification: it’s unclear that this view succeeds at delivering the result that hearers are epistemically justified in believing the accusation in the relevant paradigm cases, and even if it does, its explanation of why hearers are justified in believing the accusation is demeaning toward victims. The tension also cannot be avoided by interpreting #BelieveWomen in an alternative way, as other encroachers do, that is compatible with claiming that hearers in the relevant cases are not epistemically justified: the salient alternative interpretations of #BelieveWomen are either implausible and unsatisfying to victims or they undermine the main motivations for encroachment. So, encroachers have more work to do to show that this tension can be resolved.

We are ignorant of many things. Most of the time, that ignorance seems epistemically neutral. At other times it seems like a ground for epistemic criticism. The permissibility problem is the problem of explaining why some cases of ignorance are epistemically criticisable whilst others are not. In this chapter, Munton argues that the standard resources of epistemology, both internalist and externalist, are poorly placed to capture our evaluative practices around ignorance and solve the permissibility problem. By contrast, thinking in terms of the attentional dispositions which underwrite problematically resilient forms of ignorance can more satisfactorily ground the evaluative resources we need.

The large literature on the ethics of statistical evidence and its use in courtrooms is premised on the assumption that statistical evidence can be highly probabilifying (i.e. that it can support a very high credence). When statistical evidence seems to render a morally problematic proposition highly probable, scholars then divide over how they respond to the problem: some attempt to identify a different epistemic problem with the inference, while others grant the inference’s epistemic legitimacy but object to the conclusion on a moral or political basis. In this chapter, the authors argue that, in fact, it is very difficult to construct realistic cases in which statistical evidence is highly probabilifying. The authors explain how noisy data resulting from misclassification—a common feature of most realistic cases—drastically reduces statistical evidence’s probative value. As a result, it is not necessary to advert to additional theoretical bells and whistles to explain why one ought not form a high credence based on statistical evidence in most realistic cases.

This chapter takes up the question of how videographic public announcements (VPAs)—i.e. videos that a wide swath of the public sees and knows that everyone else can see too—have functioned to mobilize people politically, and how the presence of deepfakes in our information environment stands to change the dynamics of this mobilization. Existing work by Regina Rini, Don Fallis, and others has focused on the ways that deepfakes might interrupt our acquisition of first-order knowledge through videos. But Hyska points out that even where every audience member takes a video to be veridical, and where first-order knowledge acquisition is therefore secure, an audience aware of deepfakes in their environment will not acquire higher-order knowledge in the way that has erstwhile been characteristic for audiences of VPAs. Engaging with ideas from the literatures on public announcement logic, common knowledge, and convention, Hyska enumerates a variety of ways in which we should expect this absence of higher-order knowledge to throw up barriers to political mobilization. Hyska goes on to apply this analysis of VPAs to the mechanisms by which an uptick in publicly available videos of police brutality over the last decade, mediated by camera phones and social media, was responsible for the largest mass protests in US history in summer 2020. This makes vivid the stakes of the transformation in our mobilizing environment that Hyska claims deepfakes effect: where we lose the common-knowledge-generating effects of VPAs, there are fresh obstacles to this sort of mass mobilization.

Many people form beliefs about matters of social and political importance online, in what have been described as “echo chambers.” These include social media news feeds and news sites tailored to the consumer’s political perspective. Some philosophers have suggested that there is nothing especially worrying about this from an epistemological view, while others have taken it to be a serious problem in need of diagnosis and remedy. This chapter applies some ideas of the 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal to the dispute about echo chambers. Pascal emphasized the role of affect, or what he called “the heart,” in determining belief. The ways in which the heart can affect belief are characterized as motivated reasoning and motivated seeing—the influence of affective states on the processing of evidence and the appearance of evidence, respectively. These influences and their manifestation in online echo chambers are discussed, and the consequences for one’s rationality assessed. A Pascalian perspective that emphasizes the heart, rather than focusing exclusively on reasoning, has great potential to explain and diagnose the problem with online echo chambers, and thereby shed light on a major issue in applied epistemology.

This chapter serves as an introduction to the special issue on applied epistemology that occupies the remainder of this volume of Oxford Studies in Epistemology. The author—who is the editor of the special volume—gives a characterization of what applied epistemology is, distinguishes it from ‘social epistemology’, sets out some reasons why it is worth doing, and raises some dangers to be aware of in doing it. He then gives an overview of the chapters in the special issue and situates them in the existing literature, highlighting how they make distinctive and exciting contributions to that literature and represent some of the best new work in the field.

You omega know something when you know it, and know that you know it, and know that you know that you know it... This chapter first argues that omega knowledge matters, in the sense that it is required for rational assertion, action, inquiry, and belief. The chapter argues that existing accounts of omega knowledge face major challenges. One account is skeptical, claiming that we have no omega knowledge of any ordinary claims about the world. Another account embraces the KK thesis (that if you know something, then you know that you know it), and identifies knowledge with omega knowledge. This position faces counterexamples, and struggles to make sense of inexact knowledge. The chapter then develops a new account of knowledge, by proposing the principle of Reflective Luminosity: if you know that you know something, then you omega know it. The chapter argues that Reflective Luminosity allows for omega knowledge while avoiding the problems for KK.

Epistemic trespassing, science denial, refusal to guard against bias, mishandling higher-order evidence, and the development of vice are troubling intellectual behaviors. The chapter advances work done by psychologists on moral self-licensing to show how all of these behaviors can be explained in terms of a parallel phenomenon of epistemic self-licensing. The chapter situates this discussion at the intersection of three major epistemological projects: epistemic explanation and intervention (the project of explaining troubling intellectual phenomena in the hopes of deriving ameliorative strategies), hostile epistemology (the study of how intellectual vulnerabilities might be exploited), and the promise of higher-order evidence (the hope that higher-order evidence leads to epistemic improvement). Analyzing epistemic licensing allows us to explain and offer modest interventions aimed at mitigating these behaviors, while illuminating exploitable vulnerabilities and tempering optimism about the promise of higher-order evidence.

Might doubt and uncertainty sometimes be good, rather than bad? Is it possible to wonder whether self-confidence, self-knowledge, and decisiveness are really as uniformly excellent as some people make them out to be? Are there times that people shouldn’t be so sure of themselves, or should be uncertain or otherwise skeptical about whether they know what they’re doing and why, or whether they know the things that they think they do? Should they perhaps even be skeptical in this way most, if not all, of the time? This chapter discusses these questions in connection with three types of skeptical arguments discussed in the history of philosophy, elucidating how they can also be used to induce some measure of doubt about (almost) any claim to know that could be imagined. Following that, it concludes by explaining how encouraging extensive—or perhaps even universal—doubt or skepticism might help people to live more flourishing lives.

Talking about knowing is very useful to us. But, is any of this talk true? Numerous skeptical arguments proposed throughout the history of philosophy suggest that it might not be. Moreover, in recent years, it has also proved difficult to account for numerous kinds of variability in the ways we use knowledge-attributing sentences, including kinds of variability suggested by cases such as DeRose’s “bank cases,” Cohen’s “airport cases,” lottery problems, and more—all of which can be interpreted as pushing us in at least one skeptical direction or another. If we are to take seriously (as many theorists about metaphysics, morality, and mind have regarding discourse in those domains), the possibility that knowledge-talk is not (typically) literally true, we might wonder whether epistemologists have similar options, as well as what such options could look like for them. This paper aims to explore (given space constraints) just three forms of epistemic fictionalism. In Section 1, it briefly surveys and critically examines three approaches that an epistemic fictionalist, or perhaps more accurately, non-literalist, might pursue: exaggeration, approximation, and metaphor. It then discusses and dispatches three species of objections to these approaches in Section 2.

This article explores how aspects of traditional Chinese thought regarding creativity can influence and enrich contemporary thought about related topics: specifically, how creativity can be construed as an epistemic or intellectual virtue, and the benefits of considering it as such. It proceeds in three parts. First, I review a conception of creativity suggested by aspects of the Zhuangzi that centrally involves forms of spontaneity and adaptivity engendered by embracing you 遊, or “wandering”, contrasting it with more conventional conceptions of creativity that emphasize novelty or originality. Second, I explain how this conception of creativity illuminates how creativity can be an epistemic virtue of a surprising sort: one that concerns a disposition to—borrowing an expression from Chris Fraser—“ride along with things”. This “riding along” is ironically engendered by letting go of what David Wong has characterized as “the obsession with being right”, about which the Zhuangzi expresses concern. I argue that, while this conception of creativity eschews fixed goals, including epistemically-oriented goals like apprehending truth or developing knowledge, there are nevertheless good reasons to count creativity (so understood) as an epistemic virtue. Third, I connect these explorations with current conversations (begun by Matthew Kieran and C. Thi Nguyen) that already treat creativity or, relatedly, play as an epistemic or intellectual virtue, and explore how engaging the Zhuangzi in the manner outlined promises to help extend them.

Drawing from cross-cultural work on creativity undertaken within philosophical psychology, as well as contemporary commentaries on the philosophy of the Zhuangzi, this article motivates a conception of creativity that emphasizes spontaneity and adaptivity—rather than novelty or originality—engendered by embracing you 遊 (“wandering”). It argues that this approach to creativity can enable us to understand certain forms of religious experiences, especially those related to grief and bereavement, as creative in a sense that is compatible with both: i) views that emphasize the capacity of religious experiences to connect us with something supernatural, immaterial, or non-physical and, ii) views that emphasize the capacity of religious experiences to connect us with something natural, material, or physical. Additionally, it elaborates how these reflections might pave the way for further cross-cultural inquiries—empirical and otherwise—into the nature and value of religious experience.

Oxford Studies in Epistemology is a periodical publication which offers a regular snapshot of state-of-the-art work in this important field. Under the guidance of a distinguished editorial board composed of leading philosophers in North America, Europe, and Australasia, it publishes exemplary papers in epistemology, broadly construed. Topics within its purview include: - traditional epistemological questions concerning the nature of belief, justification, and knowledge, the status of scepticism, the nature of the a priori, etc; - new developments in epistemology, including movements such as naturalized epistemology, feminist epistemology, social epistemology, and virtue epistemology, and approaches such as contextualism; - foundational questions in decision-theory; - confirmation theory and other branches of philosophy of science that bear on traditional issues in epistemology; - topics in the philosophy of perception relevant to epistemology; - topics in cognitive science, computer science, developmental, cognitive, and social psychology that bear directly on traditional epistemological questions; - work that examines connections between epistemology and other branches of philosophy, including work on testimony and the ethics of belief. Anyone wanting to understand the latest developments at the leading edge of the discipline can start here.

Might traditional Chinese thought regarding creativity not just influence, but also enrich, contemporary European thought about the same? Moreover, is it possible that traditional Chinese thought regarding creativity might enrich contemporary thought both in a more broad, holistic sense, and more specifically regarding the nature and role of creativity as it pertains to scientific inquiry? In this paper, I elucidate why the answer to these questions is: yes. I explain in detail a classical Chinese conception of creativity rooted in Zhuangist philosophy and which centrally involves spontaneity engendered by embracing yóu遊, or “wandering”, rather than novelty or originality. I then illustrate how this conception of creativity can be used to enrich contemporary thought regarding the nature and role of creativity both in general and as it pertains to scientific inquiry in particular, as well as how to engender creativity, by arguing that it might allow us to: i) more easily remove what is frequently an obstacle to creativity, and; ii) better understand creative agents as being more intimately connected with, and as processes within and products of, their environments. Finally, I conclude by briefly remarking on how exploring various cultural perspectives on creativity promises to help us to better comprehend and promote creativity, by encouraging us to become more creative about creativity itself.

Doubt is often considered to be an enemy of creativity. But, might it be its friend, too? We see, in the Zhuangzi, a number of explorations that point toward an interesting affirmative answer to this question. To explain how the text can be interpreted as suggesting such an answer, this paper proceeds in two parts. First, in section one, I clarify what is meant by “doubt” for the purposes of this paper, as well as several ways in which it can be directed toward its relevant target: entire perspectives. Following that, in section two, I outline a conception of creativity suggested by aspects of the Zhuangzi, and explain how doubt can engender creativity, as well as a few reasons that this matters. I then close by briefly discussing two caveats.

Across a variety of religious and philosophical traditions, it is common to think that it is possible that God defies all description. This presents a problem, however, as the claim that God defies all description itself appears to describe God. Drawing on multiple religious and philosophical traditions, this paper proposes an addition to the pragmatic stock of approaches to this problem. The proposal is that apophatic utterances are best interpreted—at least in the first instance—as invitations to engage the world aesthetically and creatively, as an act of faith. Their goal is principally to motivate us to act in ways that will allow us to appreciate the extraordinary or divine, rather than to, say, believe that some proposition regarding the extraordinary or divine is true.

This paper explores a few of the ways that the Zhuang-Zi can inform contemporary analytic epistemology. I begin, in section 1, by briefly outlining and summarizing the case for my fictionalist interpretation of the text. In section 2, I discuss how the Zhuang-Zi can be brought into productive dialogue with the question of how we should respond to skeptical arguments. Specifically, I argue that the Zhuang-Zi can be reasonably interpreted as exemplifying an approach that is different from dominant contemporary responses to skeptical arguments in three ways: it is fictionalist; it motivates a skeptical perspective rather than a claim; and it accomplishes its aims in an atypical, but nonetheless contextually appropriate, way. However, the Zhuang-Zi is relevant to contemporary debates about skeptical arguments because it can be used: to respond to the same sorts of skeptical arguments that occupy contemporary commentators; to address a number of questions that arise in connection with such arguments; and to suggest important new questions for epistemologists to pursue.

This paper explores the possibility that Zhuangzi can be fruitfully interpreted as a fictionalist. It proceeds in four parts. Part one discusses two distinct and very general types of fictionalism—force and content—that might prove useful for an interpreter of the Zhuangzi. The former type of view would have it that the expressions in question—that is, the expressions that Zhuangzi is held to advocate using and interpreting non-literally—are not best seen as used in a way that aims at, e.g., truth, whereas the latter type of view would have it that the expressions in question are best seen as used in a way that aims at truth, if in a non-literal fashion. Part two surveys evidence in favor of the claim that Zhuangzi can be interpreted in terms of one or the other of these two types of fictionalism and argues that he is better characterized as endorsing a version of the former. Part three explains how interpreting Zhuangzi as a fictionalist can help to resolve notable tensions in the text and briefly explores a few additional merits of this reading of the Zhuangzi: namely, that it can give us a clearer idea of what Zhuangzi’s positive project is, unify seemingly disparate scholarly interpretations of it, and reconcile objectivist and non-objectivist strands in his work. Finally, part four concludes by gesturing toward how the interpretation proposed here might bring the Zhuangzi into productive dialogue with two longstanding philosophical questions: specifically, the question of how we should respond to skeptical arguments, and the question of how aesthetic features of works of art—and in particular, literature—might be related to their cognitive or epistemic value.

L’un des défis posés par l’inclusion des soi-disant philosophies «non-occidentales» dans le discours de la philosophie «occidentale» a trait au fait que plusieurs textes philosophiques non-occidentaux diffèrent de façon significative, en termes de style et d’approche, des textes occidentaux, principalement ceux issus de la philosophie analytique contemporaine. Comment établir un dialogue constructif entre des textes écrits de façon littéraire, qui n’ont pas l’allure d’un exposé et qui n’avancent pas clairement des positions ou des arguments philosophiques et des textes qui, au contraire, prennent la forme d’un exposé avançant des positions ou des arguments? Pourquoi, de prime abord, voudrait-on ouvrir un tel dialogue? Cet article pose ces questions par le biais de l’étude du cas du classique taoïste, leZhuāngzǐ.