When Should We Disagree about Politics?

This chapter explores when we should, from an epistemic point of view, disagree about politics by asking the question: when do we have the epistemic duty to object to assertions we take to be false or unwarranted? It begins by highlighting that the duty to object is best understood as an imperfect, rather than a perfect, duty, and hence that there are imperfect epistemic duties, in addition to moral ones. The chapter examines one specific account of imperfect moral duties: Liam Murphy’s collective view that includes what he calls the Compliance Condition that understands imperfect duties as belonging to groups or collectives, but denies that we need to “pick up the slack” from non-complying members. After showing that we should reject the Compliance Condition, the chapter outlines a view according to which the duty to object is an imperfect epistemic one that belongs to groups. It concludes by applying these considerations specifically to the political domain and highlighting the ways in which distinctive issues arise when we disagree about political matters.

Epistemic injustice in psychiatric practice: epistemic duties and the phenomenological approach

Epistemic injustice is a kind of injustice that arises when one’s capacity as an epistemic subject (eg, a knower, a reasoner) is wrongfully denied. In recent years it has been argued that psychiatric patients are often harmed in their capacity as knowers and suffer from various forms of epistemic injustice that they encounter in psychiatric services. Acknowledging that epistemic injustice is a multifaceted problem in psychiatry calls for an adequate response. In this paper I argue that, given that psychiatric patients deserve epistemic respect and have a certain epistemic privilege, healthcare professionals have a pro tanto epistemic duty to attend to and/or solicit reports of patients’ first-person experiences in order to prevent epistemic losses. I discuss the nature and scope of this epistemic duty and point to one interesting consequence. In order to prevent epistemic losses, healthcare professionals may need to provide some patients with resources and tools for expressing their experiences and first-person knowledge, such as those that have been developed within the phenomenological approach. I discuss the risk of secondary testimonial and hermeneutical injustice that the practice of relying on such external tools might pose and survey some ways to mitigate it.

Reclaiming Bentham on Torture

Nearly two and a half centuries ago, Jeremy Bentham presented a moral challenge to the absolutist view on eliminating torture in all circumstances—written in the privacy of his study and never published during his lifetime. Although three sentences of his utilitarian argument for torture in limited situations have become quite well-known (often equated with the ticking bomb scenario), Bentham’s view on torture would be greatly served by a more nuanced understanding of his sometimes-contradictory opinions, the development of his thought, and the context of his writing. This chapter aims to provide a fuller view. We will find four main points well worth highlighting: (1) Bentham was strikingly indecisive about the effectiveness of interrogational torture; (2) he keenly touched on the same questions that drive scientific research today; (3) he worried that torture could open the door to tyranny; and (4) he struggled to find the proper standard of “certainty” that could trigger the government’s use of severe pain and suffering. In the long run, the trigger softened as Bentham identified the insurmountable hurdle that we can only suspect what resides inside a prisoner’s mind. As a result, I will suggest that a moral epistemic duty was implied in his work and would require that when choosing subjects for questioning, we must begin with a presumption of innocence as the innocent and ill-informed will inevitably wind up under questioning.