Episteme· 2026Q1
Epistemic Blame: It’s Not You, It’s Me
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- 2026year
Short summary
Epistemic blame, while common, does not reliably indicate whether the blame is fitting or appropriate from a rationality standpoint, challenging existing accounts.
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Key points
- Epistemic blame is a prevalent phenomenon, distinct from routine epistemic evaluation, and often involves emotional components.
- Existing accounts, such as Jessica Brown's, fail to explain the rationality-based significance of epistemic blame because they do not reliably indicate fittingness or appropriateness.
- The proposed role of epistemic blame in regulating trust, as suggested by Cameron Boult, is also found to be insufficient.
- The overall epistemic significance of blame, from a rationality perspective, remains unclear.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract Against epistemic blame skeptics, I argue that routine epistemic evaluation cannot account for epistemic judgments which come laced with feeling. Epistemic blame, like moral blame, is prevalent in our practices and worth conceptualizing. Jessica Brown’s account captures the phenomenon well: epistemic blame arises when we believe that someone has inexcusably veered away from truth, understanding, or knowledge, coupled with the desire that they had not done so. However, as I argue here, instances of epistemic blame can fail to pick out blameworthiness – they do not reliably tell us if the blame is fitting or appropriate, and this is what matters from the standpoint of rationality. Thus, Brown’s account cannot explain epistemic blame’s epistemic significance. I consider the possibility, turning to Cameron Boult’s account, that the significance of epistemic blame lies in regulating epistemic relationships by signaling when we ought to modify trust, but here, again, I find that epistemic blame is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition. Thus, even if we grant that epistemic blame is a distinct kind, its significance, from the standpoint of rationality, is unclear.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Episteme, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Philosophy
PhilosophyArts and Humanities