Epistemic Autonomy and Externalism

Abstract

The philosophical significance of attitudinal autonomy-viz., the autonomy of attitudes such as beliefs-is widely discussed in the literature on moral responsibility and free will. Within this literature, a key debate centres around the following question: is the kind of attitudinal autonomy that's relevant to moral responsibility at a given time determined entirely by a subject's present mental structure at that time? Internalists say 'yes', externalists say 'no'. In this essay, I motivate a kind of distinctly epistemic attitudinal autonomy, attitudinal autonomy that is relevant to knowledge. I argue that regardless of whether we are externalists or internalists about the kind of attitudinal autonomy that is relevant for moral responsibility, we should be externalists about the kind of autonomy that a belief must have to qualify as knowledge.

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“…Rival accounts often take their cue from work on moral autonomy. Elzinga ( 2019 ) models his account on relational views of moral autonomy, arguing that intellectual autonomy requires a sense of oneself as a full member of the epistemic community, while Carter ( 2021 , 2022 ) models his account on historical accounts of moral responsibility, and requires that the agent possesses a history in which her cognitive faculties have not been bypassed. On these accounts, intellectual autonomy is fully consistent with deference to testimony.…”

Varieties of (Extended) Thought Manipulation

“…For discussion, seeGoodman and Flaxman (2017) andSelbst and Powles (2017). For criticism that the GDPR can reasonably be interpreted as insuring a 'right to an explanation' on the part of data subjects when purely algorithmic decisions are made that affect their interests, seeWachter, Mittelstadt, and Floridi (2017).36Sternberg and Davidson (1995),Metcalfe andWiebe (1987), andCarter (2017).…”