We Owe It to Others to Think for Ourselves

Abstract

We are often urged to figure things out for ourselves rather than to rely on other people's say-so, and thus be 'epistemically autonomous' in one sense of the term. But why? For almost any important question, there will be someone around you who is at least as well placed to answer it correctly. So why bother making up your own mind at all? I consider, and then reject, two 'egoistic' answers to this question according to which thinking for oneself is beneficial for the autonomous agent herself. I go on to suggest that the reason we should (sometimes) think for ourselves is that doing so (sometimes) increases the collective reliability of the epistemic community to which we belong. In many cases, this will do nothing at all to increase our own chances of forming correct beliefs. So, at least in this respect, the rationale for being epistemically autonomous is entirely 'altruistic'.reliably forming true beliefs, since ex hypothesi I am no more likely -and often less likely -to form correct beliefs by going it alone than by relying on others. Thus, in so far as I am thinking only of my own beliefs about public facts, and only of the likely truth-value of those beliefs, I apparently have no reason to figure things out for myself.And yet isn't there something objectionable about relying to such an extent on other people's say-so? Various Enlightenment thinkers, including Descartes (1985/1628), Locke (1975/1689 and Kant (1991Kant ( /1784, appear to have thought so -an idea that is encoded in the widely-cited informal 'fallacy' known as 'appeal to authority'. Let us call the tension between these two thoughts the Puzzle of EpistemicAutonomy. The puzzle, in short, is how to explain the value of critically evaluating claims for oneself in a world where there is almost always someone out there whose opinion is at least as likely to be correct as the opinion you would form on your own. Professional philosophers should take special interest in solving this puzzle, since their role in the educational system is often thought to consist largely in cultivating epistemic autonomy in their students (e.g., Nussbaum 2017). Indeed, an entire genre

Why Think for Yourself?

“…Such cases best illustrate the tension between epistemic autonomy and the love of truth. For arguments as to why it is epistemically valuable for the experts in a domain to be epistemically autonomous (in this sense), see Dellsén (2020Dellsén ( , 2021.…”

“…These concerns are also motivated in Huemer (2005), Levy (2007), Zagzebski (2012), andGrundmann (2021). 26 See Dellsén (2020Dellsén ( , 2021.…”

“… 18 For arguments as to why it is epistemically valuable for the experts in a domain to be epistemically autonomous (in this sense), see Dellsén (2020, 2021). …”