An Externalist Approach to Epistemic Responsibility: Intellectual Norms and their Application to Epistemic Peer Disagreement

by Andrea Robitzsch

Overview

This monograph provides a novel reliabilist approach to epistemic responsibility assessment. The author presents unique arguments for the epistemic significance of belief-influencing actions and omissions. She grounds her proposal in indirect doxastic control.

The book consists of four chapters. The first two chapters look at the different ways in which an agent might control the revision, retention, or rejection of her beliefs. They provide a systematic overview of the different approaches to doxastic control and contain a thorough study of reasons-responsive approaches to direct and indirect doxastic control.

The third chapter provides a reliabilist approach to epistemic responsibility assessment which is based on indirect doxastic control.

In the fourth chapter, the author examines epistemic peer disagreement and applies her reliabilist approach to epistemic responsibility assessment to this debate. She argues that the epistemic significance of peer disagreementdoes not only rely on the way in which an agent should revise her belief in the face of disagreement, it also relies on the way in which an agent should act.

This book deals with questions of meliorative epistemology in general and with questions concerning doxastic responsibility and epistemic responsibility assessment in particular. It will appeal to graduate students and researchers with an interest in epistemology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030190767
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	06/25/2019
Series:	Synthese Library , #411
Edition description:	1st ed. 2019
Pages:	227
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Andrea Robitzsch is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Osnabrück. She received her PhD from Ruhr University Bochum in 2016. Her research focusses on normative questions in epistemology, especially on questions concerning epistemic justification, epistemic norms, epistemic responsibility and doxastic agency.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Doxastic responsibility and direct doxastic control.- Chapter 2. An approach to indirect doxastic responsibility.- Chapter 3. Intellectual norms and epistemic normativity.- Chapter 4. What should we do in the face of epistemic peer disagreement?.