Although we have gained considerable insight through first-person accounts into the experience of credibility deflation that can accompany the attribution of delusion, its workings may remain somewhat undertheorised in relevant fields such as philosophical psychiatry. Such experience is often linked to negative perceptions or stereotypes, given the association of delusion with formally diagnosed mental health disorders, yet we have a limited explanatory account for the logics and dynamics of testimonial injustice in action. This paper goes back to the sociological work of Bateson (2000 [1955]) and Goffman (1974) on framing theory in order to move us forwards towards new interdisciplinary understandings of how it operates to the detriment of those attributed with delusion. We extend our insights into a reimagined conceptualisation of frame trap, which describes how the frame is reinforced with resistance to it. As this holds the potential to cause considerable and sustained distress through habitualised action, we consider its relevance to those lay-attributed with delusion in the familial context. Contrasting clinical with lay attribution in our analytic discussion allows us to redefine both the epistemic and deontic underpinnings of the framing of delusion, potentially informing better practices of communication through enhanced theoretical understandings.

Many widely discussed historical and contemporary views in epistemology rely on conditions requiring that evidence be causally related to the event that is the subject of belief. Such ‘causal conditions’ have also appeared both in normative debates about when belief is rational and in metaphysical debates about the relationship between belief and credence. Drawing on this literature, our paper formulates and then carefully scrutinises a range of plausible causal conditions on rational belief. A series of counterexamples leads us to rule out, in turn, distinct attempts to formulate such a condition. We then devise a condition that withstands our test cases. Ironically, though, this condition is ill-suited to play the roles for which causal conditions on rational belief have been theorised in the first place. Our result casts doubt on whether epistemologists should devote further attention to causal conditions, whether on rational belief or on other epistemic states.

Imagination plays various epistemic roles but can it help us address dream skepticism? This paper explores different conceptions of imagination – propositional, processual, and imagistic – and examines their relevance to the Cartesian dream argument. I distinguish between the phenomenology of dreaming and its epistemological threat, arguing that dream skepticism arises not from the content of dreams, but from the immersive, belief-like quality of dream experience. While some models treat dreaming as propositional or inferential, I argue that these fail to capture the distinctive imagistic nature of dream experience. This kind of imagination, vivid and involuntary, simulates the phenomenology of belief without involving actual belief formation. By interpreting dream skepticism through the lens of imagistic imagination, we gain a better understanding of why the dream scenario remains epistemically troubling – despite attempts to explain it away through propositional or inferential models.

By considering real-life cases of epistemic reparations (Lackey 2022), such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in Canada, I identify and characterize a form of epistemic injustice that I call “collective amnesia.” I distinguish this phenomenon from other recognized forms of epistemic injustice and argue that collective amnesia specifically leads to primary and secondary epistemic harms in the form of distorted representations of a community’s past, preventing an even broader epistemic community from gaining adequate knowledge of its past and present identities. More precisely, I argue that collective amnesia arises as an interplay of negative hermeneutical injustices, whereby conceptual tools are lacking (Fricker, 2007), and “positive” hermeneutical injustices, whereby the positive presence of distorting and oppressive concepts defeats or prevents the application of more adequate concepts or narratives (Falbo, 2022). In addition, I address and respond to four objections. The first two objections allow me to identify two necessary conditions under which instances of collective forgetting are morally relevant and thus may count as instances of collective amnesia as an epistemic injustice: they must be partly agential, whether on the part of individuals or structures, and due to hermeneutical marginalization. The last two objections enable me to precisely define the scope of this epistemic injustice.

Recent epistemological debates have increasingly focused on the contentious counter-closure principle, which holds that, necessarily, if an agent S believes q solely on the basis of a competent inference from p, and S knows q, then S also knows p. This principle has drawn attention due to various challenges, particularly the issue of inferential knowledge derived from false premises. In this article, we pursue two objectives. First, we argue that the counter-closure principle is untenable but for reasons that depart from traditional critiques. Specifically, we will present a novel argument against the internalist approach that supports the cases of knowledge from falsehoods. Second, we show that the counter-closure principle’s failure can be better addressed within an externalist framework by exploring novel theories of defeaters and the relationship between doxastic and propositional warrant.

It is both unavoidable and rational to form beliefs on the basis of testimony. But whose testimony should I trust? To whom would it be rational to outsource my beliefs? In this paper, I explore the role (if any) that intellectual virtues might play in rational belief formation on the basis of testimony. I begin by considering Linda Zagzebski’s proposed intellectual virtue of being able to recognize reliable authority. I argue that this quality, which is surely an excellence, is better categorized as a skill than a virtue. Then I explore whether other intellectual virtues contribute to assessing the reliability of a testifier. I consider two options: the role of virtues in (1) directly assessing a testifier and (2) indirectly assessing a testifier. With respect to (1), I follow Neil Levy and argue that such assessment requires like expertise to the testifier as opposed to intellectual virtue. With respect to (2), I argue that intellectual virtues are helpful in performing indirect assessment and they enable us to avoid social structures that undermine our ability to perform this assessment. Given that we all must form beliefs on the basis of testimony, this role for intellectual virtues is of great importance.

Often, accounts of epistemic injustice either conflate epistemic harming with epistemic wronging or assume epistemic injustice is grounded in instances of epistemic harm. Recently, Dunne and Kotsonis (2024) have argued that neither conflation nor grounding make sense; the two are separate phenomena and have attempted to show how the two relate to one another. I argue this approach is mistaken: rather than just distinguish epistemic harming and wronging, instead we should question the very existence of epistemic harm. First, I discuss the relationship between epistemic harm and epistemic wrong and briefly summarize the ways in which they come apart. While I argue that Dunne and Kotsonis’ arguments are unsuccessful, I offer a new argument to the same effect, showing that current accounts of epistemic harm are underinclusive with respect to epistemic wronging. Second, I show that, generally, wronging does not require harming. Finally, I give us reason to believe that indeed, epistemic harm doesn’t exist: I argue that the notion of intrinsically epistemic harm is suspect, and does not fit within extant theorization on harm more generally and that we, therefore, ought to abandon it entirely: like the general case, epistemic wrong can exist without epistemic harm. To modify a slogan proposed by Bradley, we should do away with epistemic harm.

According to the orthodox comparativist approach in rational choice theory, the ultimate conative basis for an agent’s preference ordering – and thus for their rational choice – is their comparative evaluation among competing options. However, it has been shown extensively in experimental psychology that an agent’s judgments about an option can be distorted by the contrast effects from their contextual reference point, which can sometimes be provided by the very competing option that they compare with. Such contrast effects from competing option, I argue, raise a new problem for comparativism: Sometimes an agent’s comparative evaluation might favor an option A over another option B only because their judgments about A’s appealing intrinsic features are distorted by B’s contrast effects. Such a comparative evaluation from contrast effects, however, is not only epistemically defective but also likely to lead to post-choice disenchantment with option A once the contrast effects from the competing option B are removed. While comparativists can either rationalize the choices made on the basis of comparative evaluations from contrast effects or idealize the type of comparative evaluations they appeal to, I argue that both strategies still face significant problems.

This paper focuses on the epistemic significance of disagreement for a specific kind of contractualist (not contractarian) moral theory. I argue that a purely hypothetical version of contractualism excludes a prima facie attractive conciliationist view of disagreement simply because of the way it constructs the moral point of view. There is no room, in such an approach, for rational, hypothetical peer disagreement within the monological deliberative procedure itself. Attempts to supplement this monological procedure with a kind of post hoc appeal to actual disagreement undermine the basic rationale for adopting a hypothetical approach in the first place. An actual agreement approach to contractualism, by contrast, is well-positioned to take disagreement seriously. For such an approach, moral disagreement signals a failure to fully validate or constitute a binding norm, one that may produce – rather than merely result from – genuine moral indeterminacy. Furthermore, as each of our positions within contractualist discourse reflects a defeasible conviction about what could be the subject of genuine, intersubjective agreement among all affected, when we encounter disagreement that is not subject to clear defeaters, we do indeed have grounds to think our convictions may be mistaken, or that we must modify our credences in ways that reflect the risks we consciously run in defending and acting on convictions that do not enjoy justificatory completion.

According to the traditional conception of epistemic responsibilist virtue, virtuous traits are evaluatively and conceptually primary. Virtuous acts are derived from, or proceed from, virtue. If an agent performs an act based on good epistemic motives but does not possess the virtue, it is merely an act that a virtuous agent would perform, but is not itself virtuous. In contrast, according to the view I propose and call Act First Responsibilism (AFR), virtuous acts are evaluatively and conceptually primary. Acts based on good motives are virtuous regardless of whether they issue from a virtuous trait. The possession of a virtuous trait is defined derivatively in terms of the performance of virtuous acts. With the new dispositional model of virtues I propose, AFR provides the metaphysical foundation for taking virtuous acts as evaluatively and conceptually primary. I argue that AFR is not normatively slight, meets the demands of an exemplarist virtue theory, and fares better than the traditional view in explaining, predicting, understanding, and evaluating an agent, as well as considering someone worthy of imitation.

When we learn that someone holds irrational beliefs, we often respond by reducing our epistemic trust in them. In this paper, I will propose a novel account of such trust reductions. The recently popular relationship-modification account (RMA) of epistemic blame will serve as a foil for this project. RMA says that epistemically blaming others for their epistemic failings involves modifying our epistemic relationships with them, paradigmatically via a reduction of epistemic trust. RMA has recently faced two challenges of extensional inadequacy, which I will show result from a mistaken view about what type of response trust reductions are. I will draw on resources from legal theory to show that trust reductions bear all the hallmarks of so-called non-punitive measures, which serve preventative collective purposes. I will argue for an account of trust reductions as non-punitive epistemic measures that serve the purpose of preventing unreliable informants from negatively affecting the epistemic commons. My account explains when and why it is appropriate to reduce epistemic trust and shows where RMA goes wrong.

According to a well-known aphorism attributed to Francis Bacon, knowledge is power. But what does it mean for knowledge to be power? This paper addresses the question not by offering a new theory of knowledge, but by examining how, and under what conditions, knowledge places an epistemic subject at an advantage over those who lack it. The account developed here does two things: first, it explicates the widely held intuition that possessing knowledge confers an empowering advantage; second, it explains why, in certain contexts, increased knowledge can paradoxically generate a sense of powerlessness. This account diverges from both causal and practicalist views of the power of knowledge: the former takes power to be a causal consequence of possessing knowledge, while the latter understands knowledge as inherently linked with the ability to perform potentially useful actions. In contrast, I argue that the power of knowledge is best understood as a probabilistic advantage, namely, an increase in the likelihood that an epistemic subject will be more successful in interacting with the outside world.

The paper examines the influence of stakes on knowledge attributions, building on the retraction-based experimental design introduced by Dinges and Zakkou. Experiment 1 replicates Dinges and Zakkou’s original findings and extends the research to third-person knowledge ascriptions. The results show that raising the stakes increases the percentage of retraction in both first- and third-person scenarios. Experiment 2 addresses potential concerns about the retraction-based design, specifically whether participants genuinely endorse the initial claim and the worry of scenario sceptics – participants who disagree with a knowledge attribution. Experiment 2 introduces a modification to the initial design by adding a knowledge-ascribing question. This addition makes the act of retraction more realistic. The results confirm that the stakes effect persists even in an improved design. I argue that these findings constitute a serious challenge to classic invariantism and a potential challenge to subject-sensitive invariantism. Their competitors – epistemic contextualism and relativism – seem to be in a better position, even though the retraction-based design at its current stage is unlikely to distinguish between these two.

This paper explores whether public reason liberals have an obligation to justify the factual claims that underpin coercive norms. Traditionally, liberal theorists have focused on justifying moral principles, assuming that empirical facts are either (1) not as deeply relevant to people’s lives as moral beliefs or (2) can be easily resolved through expert consensus. However, increasing public disputes over scientific facts and recent findings in cognitive psychology challenge these assumptions. I contest this view by presenting three counterarguments. The Inseparability Argument states that factual and moral claims are deeply intertwined, and many empirical beliefs are rooted in broader worldviews that shape personal identities; the Equivalence of Public Reasons Argument maintains that, insofar as factual claims play a decisive role in shaping coercive policies, they must be subjected to the same justificatory standards as moral claims; finally, the Argument from Epistemic Pluralism claims that liberal societies are not only morally but also epistemically diverse, with citizens holding competing views on what counts as reliable knowledge. Together, these arguments support the existence of a Liberal Duty of Factual Justification (LDFJ), asserting that public reason liberals must engage in the justification of factual premises, as they do with moral principles, to maintain democratic legitimacy.

Robert Simpson and Toby Handfield recently argued in this journal that my epistemic environmentalism is too radical. It implausibly collapses the distinction between rational response to evidence and group epistemic success and – on the mistaken assumption that this best conduces to epistemic success – requires uncritical deference to apparent experts. In this response, I argue that Simpson and Handfield badly mischaracterize my view. I neither collapse the distinction between ecological and epistemic rationality, nor do I countenance uncritical deference. I argue that environmentalism has the resources to give the right answers in the cases that Simpson and Handfield urge against my view.

The thesis that testimony is the sole foundational source of justification for moral belief will strike many as ridiculous and a non-starter for theorizing about the justification of moral beliefs. Call this thesis testimonial foundationalism. This paper argues that testimonial foundationalism deserves to be taken seriously as a live option in moral epistemology. First, I argue that if we think non-moral testimony can propositionally justify belief, then we should think that moral testimony doing the same is no more problematic. Second, I show that there are good prima facie reasons to hold testimony as the unique source of propositional justification for moral belief: Testimonial foundationalism requires fewer metaphysical commitments, gives the best explanation of our practices in moral education, and there are no special reasons stemming from skeptical challenges pushing us to reject the thesis. Finally, I tackle the “obvious objection,” which argues that in order to successfully testify to a moral fact, the testifier must first know that moral fact, but it is impossible for the first testifier to have moral knowledge by the lights of testimonial foundationalism. I conclude with an upshot of the paper, which is that it reveals there to be two independent projects in moral epistemology: providing a theory of justification for moral belief, and providing a theory of the reliability of our moral beliefs.

In daily life, most of us lack the cognitive resources to make judgements on scientific matters by ourselves. Often, we reach our judgements by relying on testimony of others. This is captured by the concept of epistemic deference: one defers one’s belief on a matter to others’ testimony. When it comes to scientific matters, most of us don’t just defer to anyone’s testimony: one first identifies trustworthy informants on the matter and defers to their testimony only. Conventional literature on this topic is dominantly concerned with highly idealised contexts and falls silent on non-ideal ones. I show this with a case study of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in China. In this paper, I make a preliminary attempt to provide alternative guidance for problematic environments with politicized scientific institutions and heavy information censorship such as China. I argue that the ‘dissent scouting’ requirement is a helpful addition in epistemically problematic environments.

Is it ever rational to change your mind based on learning that others have changed theirs? This paper answers affirmatively and explores the conditions under which learning about others’ mind-changes should prompt you to reconsider your own. I propose that learning about others’ shifts in belief can motivate further inquiry, provide information about the existence or quality of first-order evidence, and recalibrate our evaluation of the issues at stake. However, not all changes of mind are epistemically meaningful: some may be superficial, misleading, or driven by non-epistemic factors. Critical evaluation is necessary for distinguishing between cases that provide genuine insight and those that are irrelevant. By investigating these dynamics, I aim to illuminate the broader epistemological significance of mind-changing and its implications for navigating complex and contentious issues.