Shared Epistemic Responsibility

Millar, Boyd

doi:10.1017/epi.2019.21

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…De Haan 2021; Fleisher and Šešelja 2023). For instance, Boyd Millar (2021) argues that individuals can be responsible not only for their own individual epistemic conduct, but can also be jointly responsible for the joint epistemic conduct of the collective of which they are a part. While Millar's joint epistemic responsibility is something over and above individual epistemic responsibility, it is still a kind of direct epistemic responsibility.…”

Section: Shared Vs Vicarious Epistemic Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Millar is interested in cases where individuals seem blameless for their own individual epistemic conduct, but nevertheless seem epistemically blameworthy for something . Consider Heinrich, ‘who lives in an isolated European community a few hundred years ago where everyone believes there is such a thing as witchcraft’ (Millar 2021: 502). Heinrich grew up hearing countless stories from authoritative sources about witches; he has never encountered undermining or rebutting evidence casting doubt on the stories.…”

Section: Shared Vs Vicarious Epistemic Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…My primary concern in all this is to motivate a compelling option for thinking about epistemic complicity, and deploy it in two main ways: (i) to explain what it takes for an account of complicity to be epistemic ; and (ii) to demonstrate the theoretical usefulness of epistemic complicity. To this latter end, in Section 6, I argue that epistemic complicity has an important role to play alongside ‘shared epistemic responsibility’ (Millar 2021) in our epistemic blaming practices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To this latter end, in Section 6, I argue that 5 For some central examples, see Cassam 2019;Levy 2007;Nottelmann 2007;Montmarquet 1992;Owens 2000;Peels 2016;Van Woudenberg 2009;Schmidt and Ernst 2020;Zagzebski 1996. There are too many others to list here. epistemic complicity has an important role to play alongside 'shared epistemic responsibility' (Millar 2021) in our epistemic blaming practices.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Epistemic Complicity

Boult

2023

Episteme

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There is a widely accepted distinction between being directly responsible for a wrongdoing versus being somehow indirectly or vicariously responsible for the wrongdoing of another person or collective. Often this is couched in analyses of complicity, and complicity's role in the relationship between individual and collective wrongdoing. Complicity is important because, inter alia, it allows us to make sense of individuals who may be blameless or blameworthy to a relatively low degree for their immediate conduct, but are nevertheless blameworthy to a higher degree for their implication in some larger (or another person's) wrongdoing. In this paper, I argue that there is a distinctively epistemic kind of complicity. First, I motivate the distinction between direct and vicarious responsibility with three interlocking arguments, respectively appealing to: (i) the structure of rational agency; (ii) linguistic considerations; (iii) the role of ‘principal' vs. ‘accomplice’ in legal doctrine. I show how these arguments naturally extend to the epistemic domain, motivating an epistemic form of vicarious responsibility. I then examine complicity as a mechanism of vicarious epistemic responsibility. To fill this out, I engage with an epistemic analogue of the debate about the role of intention versus causal contribution in complicity. I propose a Casual Account of Epistemic Complicity, arguing that it accommodates a wide range of cases, and enables fine-grained explanations of degrees of culpability for epistemic complicity. With an adequate account of epistemic complicity on hand, we can explain what is objectionable about an important class of epistemic agent who, on an individual level, may be epistemically blameless or blameworthy to a relatively low degree, but whose relation to other individuals or collectives nevertheless makes them epistemically blameworthy to a higher degree. I explore some broader implications of this result.

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Section: Shared Vs Vicarious Epistemic Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Shared Vs Vicarious Epistemic Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Epistemic Complicity

Boult

2023

Episteme

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“… Millar (2020). instead concerns joint responsibility for individual beliefs and actions which affect such beliefs.…”

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confidence: 99%

Responsibility for Collective Epistemic Harms

Fleisher

Šešelja

2022

Philos. sci.

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Discussion of epistemic responsibility typically focuses on belief formation and actions leading to it. Similarly, accounts of collective epistemic responsibility have addressed the issue of collective belief formation and associated actions. However, there has been little discussion of collective responsibility for preventing epistemic harms, particularly those preventable only by the action of an unorganized group. We propose an account of collective epistemic responsibility which fills this gap. Building on Hindriks’ (2019) account of collective moral responsibility, we introduce the Epistemic Duty to Join Forces. Our theory provides an account of the responsibilities of scientists to prevent epistemic harms during inquiry.

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Collective inaction, omission, and non-action: when not acting is indeed on ‘us’

Schwenkenbecher

2022

Synthese

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The statement that we are currently failing to address some of humanity’s greatest challenges seems uncontroversial—we are not doing enough to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 °C and we are exposing vulnerable people to preventable diseases when failing to produce herd immunity. But what singles out such failings (inactions) from all the things we did not do (non-actions) when all are unintended? Unlike their individualist counterparts, collective inaction and omission have not yet received much attention in the literature. (Unintended) collective inaction, I argue, can be attributed to a group of agents where a collective action (or a collective outcome) x that the agents did not perform (or did not produce) was collectively feasible at time t where each agent in that group had sufficient reason to contribute to performing (or producing) x or others had a reasonable expectation that they would perform (or produce) x. I show that, perhaps surprisingly, we can speak of collective inaction even where only one member of the group fails to act. However, where large and dispersed groups of agents are concerned, there is often no meaningful way of attributing collective failings. Still, I contend that the failure to close the global emissions gap and—in some cases—to generate herd immunity are indeed on us.

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Shared Epistemic Responsibility

Cited by 11 publications

References 38 publications

Epistemic Complicity

Epistemic Complicity

Responsibility for Collective Epistemic Harms

Collective inaction, omission, and non-action: when not acting is indeed on ‘us’

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