An Epistemic Defense of News Abstinence

If we have reason to believe that by following the news, we acquire more false beliefs than true ones or we acquire true but irrelevant beliefs, then we may be justified in taking a newsbreak. We are propositionally justified in temporarily ignoring the news either in a domain or from a source if (i) we are in a fake news environment or are justified in believing that we are, and (ii) it is cognitively difficult or time consuming to discriminate genuine from fake news or to obtain genuine news. The defense of news abstinence rests either on reliabilism about justification or the defeasibility theory. When reliabilism is combined with epistemic consequentialism, news abstinence in a fake news environment is not only epistemically permitted but also epistemically required.

Are There Any Epistemic Consequentialists?

Selim Berker argues (1) that epistemic consequentialism is pervasive in epistemology and (2) that epistemic consequentialism is structurally flawed. (1) is incorrect, however. I distinguish between epistemic consequentialism and epistemic instrumentalism and argue that most putative consequentialists should be considered instrumentalists. I also identify the structural problem of epistemic consequentialism Berker attempts to pinpoint and show that epistemic instrumentalism does not have the consequentialist problem.

The Truth Fairy and the Indirect Epistemic Consequentialist

Friends of Wright-entitlement cannot appeal to direct epistemic consequentialism (believe or accept what maximizes expected epistemic value) in order to account for the epistemic rationality of accepting Wright-entitled propositions. The tenability of direct consequentialism is undermined by the “Truth Fairy”: a powerful being who offers you great epistemic reward (in terms of true beliefs) if you accept a proposition p for which you have evidence neither for nor against. However, this chapter argues that a form of indirect epistemic consequentialism seems promising as a way to deal with the Truth Fairy problem. The relevant form of indirect consequentialism accommodates evidentialism but allows for exceptions in the case of anti-sceptical hypotheses. Since these are the kind of propositions to which Wright-entitlement is supposed to apply—i.e. cornerstone propositions—indirect consequentialism is entitlement-friendly.

An Epistemic Nonconsequentialism

Despite the recent backlash against epistemic consequentialism, an explicit systematic alternative has yet to emerge. This article articulates and defends a novel alternative, Epistemic Kantianism, which rests on a requirement of respect for the truth. Section 1 tackles some preliminaries concerning the proper formulation of the epistemic consequentialism/nonconsequentialism divide, explains where Epistemic Kantianism falls in the dialectical landscape, and shows how it can capture what seems attractive about epistemic consequentialism while yielding predictions that are harder for the latter to secure in a principled way. Section 2 presents Epistemic Kantianism. Section 3 argues that it is uniquely poised to satisfy the desiderata set out in section 1 on an ideal theory of epistemic justification. Section 4 gives three further arguments, suggesting that it (1) best explains the normative significance of the subject's perspective in epistemology, (2) follows from the kind of axiology needed to solve the swamping problem together with modest assumptions about the relation between the evaluative and the deontic, and (3) illuminates certain asymmetries in epistemic value and obligation. Section 5 takes stock and reassesses the score in the debate.

Esoteric Reliabilism

Survey data suggest that many philosophers are reliabilists, in believing that beliefs are justified iff produced by a reliable process. This is bad news if reliabilism is true. Empirical results suggest that a commitment to reliable belief-formation leads to overconfident second-guessing of reliable heuristics. Hence, a widespread belief in reliabilism is likely to be epistemically detrimental by the reliabilist's own standard. The solution is a form of two-level epistemic consequentialism, where an esoteric commitment to reliabilism will be appropriate for an enlightened few, while a form of epistemic fetishism – on which some heuristics are treated as fundamental epistemic norms – is appropriate for the rest of us.

Conclusion

The views outlined in earlier chapters are systematically presented. These include: the truth of epistemic institutionalism and falsity of analogous institutionalist views in morality; the challenges facing categorical reasons for action that do not apply to categorial reasons for belief; the reducible nature of epistemic properties and relations—including the defensibility of this view in light of concerns with the normativity of probability and the falsity of both veritism and epistemic consequentialism—in contrast to the irreducible nature of moral properties and relations, and the possibility of ‘the puzzling combination’. It is concluded that the argument from analogy fails and that the moral error theory may yet be true, but that it would be illegitimate to conclude that it is true.