Mara Neijzen

This paper constructs epistemic FOMO as an epistemic equivalent of the ubiquitous emotional experience of FOMO: a fear of missing out. As FOMO simpliciter entails a socially informed and negatively valenced affective state directed to missing out on potentially important experiential goods, epistemic FOMO is a socially informed and negatively valenced affective state directed to missing out on potentially important epistemic goods, i.e., information plausibly acquired by members of one’s social circle. Akin to epistemic emotions such as curiosity and interest, epistemic FOMO inherently motivates information acquisition. However, in doing so, it contributes to two epistemically detrimental phenomena in our contemporary sociotechnological environment. First, problematic news consumption, which entails an overconsumption or preoccupation with information on current events which may lead to news fatigue or even depressed or anxious moods, which in turn reduces information acquisition on current events and other topics. Second, epistemic FOMO promotes the formation of epistemic bubbles, where certain relevant voices are omitted from one’s epistemic environment. As I argue for the ubiquity of epistemic FOMO, as well as its epistemically maladaptive consequences, I suggest that this emotion ought to be taken seriously in future analyses of epistemic emotions and contemporary processes of online information acquisition.

This paper analyses a novel and increasingly prevalent category of epistemic behaviour: _doombehaviour_, constituted by the popular phenomena of _doomscrolling_ and _doomsurfing_, as well as _doomchecking_, which is introduced in this paper. Doombehaviour, referring to the frequent or immersive online consumption of negatively valenced news, became ubiquitous during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. As this behaviour has since then been found to negatively impact mood and mental health, advice has been to minimise doombehaviour or even limit news consumption altogether. Yet, as I argue, this assessment overlooks the importance of the epistemic motivation instantiating the behaviour. By presenting an analysis of doomscrolling, doomsurfing, and doomchecking within the context of our socio-technical environment, arguing for the distinct instrumental epistemic values of these categories of doombehaviour, this paper provides more nuanced advice for individuals seeking to balance the potential epistemic benefits and prudential costs of this behaviour. Epistemically motivated individuals should refrain from doomscrolling due to the risk of consuming sophisticated misinformation. However, within the parameters presented in this paper, the epistemic goods obtained through doomchecking and doomsurfing may justify the prudential costs for individuals motivated to acquire knowledge of, or be informed about, current events. This discussion opens the door to further explorations of these increasingly prevalent and potentially harmful epistemic behaviours that have, so far, been ignored by the discipline.

Responsibilist epistemic virtues, such as intellectual humility, thoroughness, and inquisitiveness, motivate and inform behaviour to acquire, assess, and share epistemic goods. While existing accounts primarily emphasise the virtues' role in knowledge acquisition, I argue for casting a wider net by redefining responsibilist virtues in their connection to wisdom. I draw upon Sosa's AAA structure of competence – which he employs to support the direct and constitutive relation between reliabilist virtues (e.g., memory and perception) and knowledge – proposing that the same structure can be applied to responsibilist virtues, establishing their direct and constitutive relation to wisdom. The resulting framework provides us with an account of how epistemic agents can responsibly engage with our current sociotechnical environment. The first half of the thesis establishes this framework, arguing for its implementation. The value of this framework is, in part, its ability to uphold the claim that responsibilist virtues are admirable traits of character that aid one’s epistemically responsible engagement with the environment. The AAA structure of competence entails that a performance is Adroit, i.e., resulting from a reliable competence, Accurate, whereby the performance hits the intended target or the functional goal given the competence, and Apt, whereby it is Accurate as it is Adroit. Applying this to responsibilist virtue, an act is adroit when it results from an acquired, admirable, epistemically motivated, and stable disposition to perform behaviour characteristic of the relevant intellectual virtue. This act is accurate when it is successfully virtuous, i.e., admirable. Within this framework, an act from an admirable, virtuous disposition (i.e., an adroit act) can fail to be virtuous by undermining another virtue, or successfully virtuous when it does not. An apt act of intellectual virtue is thereby an act performed from an intellectual virtue (e.g., attentiveness or intellectual humility), that is admirable because it is adroit (e.g., as it was performed from a virtuous disposition to be attentive or intellectually humble, without the act undermining another virtue). The second half of the thesis applies this framework to various phenomena within the digital epistemic environment. It explores how increasingly prevalent epistemic emotions, such as an epistemic fear of missing out (epistemic FOMO) and morbid curiosity, can shape epistemic behaviour to be unwise, despite the knowledge one may acquire through acts motivated by these emotions. For example, ‘doombehaviour’ – entailing the frequent or long-lasting consumption of distressing news – is examined in light of its impact on mental health and other prudential concerns. Moreover, our digital environment supplies us with novel epistemic responsibilities in relation to consuming attention-grabbing information, as well as inadvertently distributing misinformation. By applying the framework of apt intellectually virtuous action on these and similar phenomena, we can give an account of wise engagement with our sociotechnical environment.

Despite efforts to make virtue-acquisition more accessible, neo-Aristotelian accounts of virtue currently exclude those who occasionally experience depressive episodes from potentially possessing moral virtue. This problem of accessibility is especially relevant given the increased prevalence of depression due to, e.g., the COVID19 pandemic. Through an interdisciplinary analysis, I argue that one’s ability to adequately recognise and respond to virtuous possibilities for action is impoverished during a depressive episode. This is illustrated through the depressed agent’s field of affordances: the collection of possible actions an agent perceives. As moral virtues are conceptualised as stable dispositions, even a temporary yet significant decrease in moral competence excludes the agent from possessing the relevant virtue. To solve this problem of accessibility, I argue that, similar to Aristotle’s discussion of sleep, depressive episodes can be conceptualised as temporary states that cause one’s virtues to be inactive, rather than absent.

Stichter’s The Skillfulness of Virtue provides an original and contemporary discussion of virtue-acquisition from an interdisciplinary standpoint. By equating virtues to skills, he offers an empirically informed progression towards virtue expertise. With the focus on gaining proficiency, there is little room to analyse the status of the virtue-novice, who is equated to a novice in any other skill: an agent consciously following simple rules, gaining experience in order to respond to normatively-laden situations with more automaticity in the following stages of skill-acquisition. This paper argues for a disanalogy between the virtue novice and novices in other skills, resulting from the understanding that follows from learning virtue words such as ‘kindness’ and ‘honesty’. Our brains are structured to find and subsequently use patterns to skilfully move around in our environment. These patterns can be represented in what Stichter calls ‘schemas’ or mental models of categorisations. Virtue words refer to patterns that would be difficult to categorise without linguistic labels, as instances of these categories are highly divergent. Virtue words are thus learned through examples of virtuous behaviour. Moreover, as virtue words are thick ethical concepts, they contain a normative load. I argue that due to these characteristics, novices who use virtue vocabulary are in a more advanced position than novices in other skills. So, a kindness novice who understands the word ‘kind’ has a better idea of how to act kindly than the chess novice has an idea of how to play chess by understanding the word ‘chess’.