Tim Smartt

Scepticism about epistemic blame maintains that there is no distinctly epistemic form of blame. Boult (Philoso Stud 181: 387–396, 2024) challenges this view on the grounds that a particular theory of epistemic blame—the relationship modification account—can be defended against the sceptic. His defence includes two central claims. First, Boult proposes a pluralism in our repertoire of epistemic accountability practices that makes space for both epistemic blame and epistemic evaluation. Second, he develops a more 'sceptic-resistant' way of articulating the phenomenon that proponents of epistemic blame believe a theory of epistemic blame is needed to explain. In my view, neither of these arguments should convince us. I argue that the epistemic blame sceptic can meet both challenges. Although my arguments largely focus on Boult’s defence of his preferred account of epistemic blame, I also set out two general problems that face any theory of epistemic blame. The upshot is that there remain strong grounds for scepticism about epistemic blame.

Scepticism about epistemic blame maintains that there is no distinctly epistemic form of blame. Cameron Boult (2024a) challenges this view on the grounds that a particular theory of epistemic blame—the relationship modification account—can be defended against the sceptic. His defence includes two central claims. First, Boult proposes a pluralism in our repertoire of epistemic accountability practices that makes space for both epistemic blame and epistemic evaluation. Second, he develops a more ’sceptic-resistant’ way of articulating the phenomenon that proponents of epistemic blame believe a theory of epistemic blame is needed to explain. In my view, neither of these arguments should convince us. I argue that the epistemic blame sceptic can meet both challenges. Although my arguments largely focus on Boult’s defence of his preferred account of epistemic blame, I also set out two general problems that faces any theory of epistemic blame. The upshot is that there remain strong grounds for scepticism about epistemic blame.

Can epistemology require the impossible? Many philosophers believe the answer is ‘no’; if an epistemological theory generates a requirement that it would be impossible to satisfy, then, no matter how attractive the theory is, it is false. This view seems to depend on the idea that ought implies can in epistemology, at least in some sense. How should we understand this principle? In this paper, I introduce and explore a strong version of an epistemic ought implies can principle whereby an epistemic ought implies a psychological can. I outline a novel way to understand this principle—one which takes it in a contextualist spirit—and argue that it can meet two serious challenges that often lead philosophers to reject similar principles. The challenges are making the notion of ‘psychological ability’ sufficiently clear and avoiding an excessive permissiveness which diminishes the normative force of epistemic requirements. The upshot is that a strong epistemic ought implies can principle is more plausible than many philosophers think.

I argue that the methodology of model building motivates the view that the norms of formal epistemology should not be excessively demanding. This is quite a different picture than one often encounters, especially among philosophers who are sceptical of the usefulness of formal work in epistemology. I argue for this view in two ways. First, formal epistemologists are engaged in a particular kind of modelling—namely, normative modelling—which includes a feature that supports demandingness objections. One role of normative models is to deliver normative guidance—indeed, this is a key difference between normative models and descriptive models. Of course, should and can are two different matters, and one might wonder: even if normative models should be action-guiding, can they be? Second, I argue that normative epistemological models can deliver on this promise. Taken together, the lines of argument make the case that normative models should and can deliver normative guidance. In other words, we can have formal epistemology without demandingness.

In this paper we argue that the problem of conspiracy theories circulating through specific social groups runs deeper than is appreciated. The epistemic networks involved in the propagation of conspiracy theories cannot always be deemed to be irrational, with motivated reasoning at their heart. There are, after all, rational epistemic bubbles—those that rightly ignore unreliable information sources. We provide a rational reconstruction of conspiratorial thinking, which suggests that, under such a characterisation, many interventions aimed at reducing conspiracy belief are no longer tenable. In particular, we argue that popular competence and containment strategies discussed in the philosophical and psychological literatures and pursued by governments and social media corporations are not fit for purpose.

This teaching resource introduces undergraduate students to the central argument of Descartes’s Second Meditation. René Descartes was a French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, he embarked on a kind of intellectual cleansing and reorientation. He explored a radical way that we might free ourselves from everything that distorts our thinking—such as preconceived opinions, prejudices, and the confused testimony of unreliable sources—and place our views about the world on a new, pure, and rock-solid foundation. Descartes splits his meditations up into six parts. In the First Meditation, he describes a once in a lifetime exercise of subjecting all his beliefs to intense doubt. In the Second Meditation, he discusses whether any belief could survive this exercise. This short article summarises and explains Descartes’ argument that purports to show that one special belief can serve as a stable foundation for the entire intellectual project of learning about the world.

I advocate scepticism about epistemic blame; the view that we have good reason to think there is no distinctively epistemic form of blame. Epistemologists often find it useful to draw a distinction between blameless and blameworthy norm violation. In recent years, this has led several writers to develop theories of ‘epistemic blame.’ I present two challenges against the very idea of epistemic blame. First, everything that is supposedly done by epistemic blame is done by epistemic evaluation, at least according to a prominent view about the social role of epistemic evaluation. Parsimony considerations count against introducing an idle mechanism that does the same work as an existing one. Second, no current theory of epistemic blame includes a plausible account of the force of epistemic blame or the practices that could express it. I conclude that we should give up the notion of epistemic blame.

Craig Callender [2022] provides a novel challenge to the non-arbitrariness principle. His challenge plays an important role in his argument for the rational permissibility of a non-exponential temporal discounting rate. But the challenge is also of wider interest: it raises significant questions about whether we ought to accept the non-arbitrariness principle as a constraint on rational preferences. In this paper, I present two reasons to resist Callender’s challenge. First, I present a reason to reject his claim that the non-arbitrariness principle only targets pure time preferences. Second, I criticize the inference Callender draws from a modest claim to a much stronger claim. The modest claim is that it can be hard to reveal the contents of an agent’s preferences. The stronger claim is that this provides us with a reason to reject a certain kind of normative constraint on rational preferences. I argue that the modest claim doesn’t motivate the stronger claim. The upshot of my two arguments is good news for those sympathetic to the non-arbitrariness principle: Callender’s challenge can be overcome, at least as it currently stands.

In this paper, I provide an argument for rejecting Sarah Moss's recent account of legal proof. Moss's account is attractive in a number of ways. It provides a new version of a knowledge-based theory of legal proof that elegantly resolves a number of puzzles about mere statistical evidence in the law. Moreover, the account promises to have attractive implications for social and moral philosophy, in particular about the impermissibility of racial profiling and other harmful kinds of statistical generalisation. In this paper, I show that Moss's account of legal proof crucially depends on a moral norm called the rule of consideration. I argue that we have a number of reasons to be sceptical of this rule. Once we reject the rule, it is not clear that Moss's account of legal proof is either plausible or attractive.