Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pjpqr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-25T11:27:06.683Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

When Is Company Unwelcome?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2020

Neil Levy*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, NSW, Australia and University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Abstract

In a recent paper in this journal, Joshua Blanchard has identified a novel problem: the problem of unwelcome epistemic company. We find ourselves in unwelcome epistemic company when we hold a belief that is also held mainly or most prominently by those we regard as morally or epistemically bad. Blanchard argues that some, but not all, unwelcome epistemic company provides higher-order evidence against our belief. But he doesn't provide a test for when company is unwelcome or a diagnosis of why it is unwelcome. I provide both. On my disjunctive test, unwelcome epistemic company provides us with a defeater when either there is a match between the content of the belief and the properties that make our company unwelcome, or there is reason to suspect that the belief arose via a shared, unreliable, causal process.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berry, R. (2004). Hitler, Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover. New York, NY: Pythagorean Books.Google Scholar
Blanchard, J. (Forthcoming). ‘The Problem of Unwelcome Epistemic Company.’ Episteme, 113. https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2020.32.Google Scholar
Christensen, D. (2007). ‘Epistemology of Disagreement: The Good News’. The Philosophical Review 116(2), 187217. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2006-035.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lackey, J. (2010). ‘A Justificationist View of Disagreement's Epistemic Significance.’ In Haddock, A., Millar, A. and Pritchard, D. (eds), Social Epistemology, pp. 298325. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577477.001.0001/acprof-9780199577477-chapter-15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matheson, J. (2015). The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risch, H.A. (2020). ‘The Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It.’ Newsweek, 23 July. https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exists-we-need-start-using-it-opinion-1519535.Google Scholar