Epistemic Responsibility and Ecological Thinking

This is the third paper in the invited collection. Maloney highlights commonalities and divergences between two of Code’s works, Epistemic Responsibility (1987) and Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location (2006), focussing on three concepts: epistemic responsibility, which is central and common across both works; cognitive interdependence which is common to both works, but undergoes a major transformation in Ecological Thinking; and advocacy, which is entirely absent from the discussion in Epistemic Responsibility. Code’s work intersects with aspects of the work of two other thinkers—Miranda Fricker’s hermeneutic injustice and Mikhail Bakhtin’s creative understanding. Advocacy as it emerges in Ecological Thinking must include a dialogical process with the other that leads both to and from greater self-understanding if it is to do the work of destabilizing dominant modes of knowing; further, advocacy is both necessary for, and can only happen within, epistemic community.

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Epistemic Responsibility and Ecological Thinking

Hypatia ◽

10.1111/j.1527-2001.2008.tb01172.x ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 23 (1) ◽

pp. 170-176 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Phyllis Rooney

Keyword(s):

Epistemic Responsibility ◽

Ecological Thinking

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Thinking Ecologically, Knowing Responsibly

Environmental Philosophy ◽

10.5840/envirophil20201716 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 19-37

Author(s):

Lorraine Code ◽

Keyword(s):

Epistemic Responsibility ◽

Epistemic Agency ◽

Tacit Assumption ◽

Physical Objects ◽

Ecological Thinking

This essay extends my engagements with questions of epistemic agency and the politics of epistemic location, in Epistemic Responsibility and in Ecological Thinking to consider how questions of understanding and of certainty play diversely into human and other ecological circumstances. In so doing, it opens lines of inquiry not immediately available in standard western-northern approaches to epistemology with their concentration on medium-sized physical objects in their presupposed neutrality and replicability. Working from a tacit assumption that knowing and knowers are always situated, and that they are enabled or restricted in so being, the book engages with specific epistemic situations in order to show how “situatedness” indeed makes knowledge possible, while regarding it as an enabling rather than a constraining modality.

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Core Criteria II

10.1093/oso/9780198793670.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Sanford C. Goldberg

Keyword(s):

Propositional Content ◽

Epistemic Responsibility ◽

Process Reliabilism ◽

The Subject ◽

Explicit Criteria

This chapter completes the account of the explicit criteria for epistemically proper belief. Given a belief formed through a process or processes on which the subject enjoyed a default permission to rely, the belief is epistemically proper just in case it satisfies a version of Process Reliabilism which the author calls Coherence-Infused Reliabilism (CIR). CIR requires that (i) beliefs be formed and sustained through processes that were reliable (or conditionally reliable), and (ii) the propositional content of the belief, as well as the hypothesis asserting the reliability of the processes as used on this occasion, cohere with the subject’s background beliefs. After arguing that such a view is well motivated, the author suggests that condition (ii) amounts to the exemplification of a minimal kind of epistemic responsibility, and goes on to generalize the account to cover all beliefs (not just basic ones).

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Critical Thinking and Epistemic Responsibility Revisited

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research ◽

10.1007/s40961-021-00251-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Surajit Barua

Keyword(s):

Critical Thinking ◽

Epistemic Responsibility

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JUSTIFIED BELIEF IN A DIGITAL AGE: ON THE EPISTEMIC IMPLICATIONS OF SECRET INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES

Episteme ◽

10.1017/epi.2013.11 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 117-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 26

Author(s):

Boaz Miller ◽

Isaac Record

Keyword(s):

Conceptual Framework ◽

Search Engines ◽

Digital Age ◽

Epistemic Responsibility ◽

Modes Of Operation ◽

Internet Technologies ◽

Justified Belief ◽

The Subject ◽

Shed Light ◽

Justificatory Status

AbstractPeople increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered internet sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users' reliance on internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns within standard theories of knowledge and justification. To shed light on the problem, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, action and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject's particular decision-taking circumstances, and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far as one can, whether the information upon which the judgment will rest is biased or incomplete. What this responsibility comprises is partly determined by the inquiry-enabling technologies available to the subject. We argue that a subject's beliefs that are formed based on internet-filtered information are less justified than they would be if she either knew how filtering worked or relied on additional sources, and that the subject may have the epistemic responsibility to take measures to enhance the justificatory status of such beliefs.

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