Sage School of Philosophy

Ethics and Epistemology: Still Different Animals 

A popular work assumption in recent analytical philosophical discussions is that if ethics and epistemology are both normative, ethical concepts and epistemological concepts are isomorphic to each other: if there's blame, there's also epistemic blame, if there are moral duties, there are also epistemic duties, if there are virtues, there are also epistemic virtues, and so on, sometimes down to pretty small details, as with epistemic courage or epistemic atonement. In this talk (which is part of a project I'm working on with Tim Smartt) I will argue that this is a hasty assumption. More specifically, I will argue that epistemic norms are quite different from duties and that when we criticize people for failure to respond correctly to epistemic reasons, what we are doing is not properly called "blame". The analogies that can lead one to think otherwise break down when one remembers the role that will, effort and motivation have in the moral domain.