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We have increasingly sophisticated ways of acquiring and communicating knowledge, but efforts to spread this knowledge often encounter resistance to evidence. The phenomenon of resistance to evidence, while subject to thorough investigation in social psychology, is acutely under-theorised in the philosophical literature. Mona Simion's book is concerned with positive epistemology: it argues that we have epistemic obligations to update and form beliefs on available and undefeated evidence. In turn, our resistance to easily available evidence is unpacked as an instance of epistemic malfunctioning. Simion develops a full positive, integrated epistemological picture in conjunction with novel accounts of evidence, defeat, norms of inquiry, permissible suspension, and disinformation. Her book is relevant for anyone with an interest in the nature of evidence and justified belief and in the best ways to avoid the high-stakes practical consequences of evidence resistance in policy and practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This chapter dwells at the intersection of the social psychology of knowledge resistance and epistemic normativity to offer the first full taxonomy of resistance to evidence. It first individuates the phenomenon via paradigmatic instances, and then it taxonomises it according to two parameters: (1) paradigmatic triggering conditions and (2) epistemic normative status. I argue that the phenomenon of resistance to evidence is epistemologically narrower but psychologically broader than is assumed in the extant literature in social psychology. This, in turn, gives us reason to believe that addressing this phenomenon in policy and practice will be a much more complex endeavour than is currently assumed. In the remainder of the book, I examine the extant literature on evidence, defeat, justification, permissible suspension, and epistemic responsibility in search of the normative resources required to fully accommodate the psychological breadth and epistemic normative status of the phenomenon of resistance to evidence.
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