Rory Aird

Objecting to asserted falsehood is an everyday practice. Despite its apparent ubiquity however, there remains a distinct dearth of discussion of objecting in the epistemology literature, with the small amount of extant scholarship focusing primarily on the prescriptive—that is, epistemic duties to object. The spotlight being placed so has elided a key area of research which seems to precede any prescriptive discussion; namely, evaluative norms about what makes for a good objection. After all, knowledge that one ought to object lacks utility if one does not also know how to well discharge such a duty. Thus, in this paper, I build a complete picture of the evaluative normativity of objecting based on a Sosan performance-normative framework, neatly answering the question of what is an epistemically good objection—it is an apt one. The view is then extended to explain a novel area: the evaluative normativity of forbearance from objecting, what I call quiescing.

Recent work in social epistemology has discussed obligations to engage with challenges to our beliefs like climate change denial or anti-vaccine sentiment, and the potential benefits to and dangers for both the engager and the engaged from doing so. The spotlight being trained here, however, has elided a key issue: the possible risks from engaging for third-party observers, not merely the engager and the engaged. In this paper, I argue that not only are these risks an underappreciated aspect of engaging that should be discussed, their neglect is especially concerning as the potential negative epistemic fallout threatens to overwhelm any possible benefits that may be gained from engaging, regardless of how the engagement actually goes. I close by drawing out the theoretical and practical implications from this and sketch a few strategies to conceivably avoid said risks.