Why Ideal Epistemology?

Abstract

Ideal epistemologists investigate the nature of pure epistemic rationality, abstracting away from human cognitive limitations. Non-ideal epistemologists investigate epistemic norms that are satisfiable by most humans, most of the time. Ideal epistemology faces a number of challenges, aimed at both its substantive commitments and its philosophical worth. This paper explains the relation between ideal and non-ideal epistemology, with the aim of justifying ideal epistemology. Its approach is meta-epistemological, focusing on the meaning and purpose of epistemic evaluations. I provide an account on which the fundamental difference between ideal and non-ideal epistemic evaluations is that only the non-ideal epistemic ‘ought’ implies any substantive ‘can’. I argue that only ideal epistemic evaluations are ‘normatively robust’: they are neither conventional nor seriously context-sensitive. Non-ideal epistemic evaluations are normatively non-robust, exhibiting both conventionality and serious context-sensitivity from an interesting variety of distinct sources. For this reason, non-ideal epistemic evaluations won’t characterize the fundamental nature of epistemic rationality. Non-ideal epistemic rationality depends, not merely on what’s epistemically valuable, but also on modally contingent epistemic conventions and contextually contingent constraints on epistemic options. If we want a normatively robust theory of epistemic rationality, ideal epistemology is the only game in town.

On the Ecological and Internal Rationality of Bayesian Conditionalization and Other Belief Updating Strategies

“…Readers may worry that the alternative picture that we end up with is hopelessly messy and context-sensitive, where nothing of any generality can be said about how rational agents should respond to evidence (cf. Carr (2021)). I think there is good reason to think that this will not be the case.…”

Why bounded rationality (in epistemology)?

“…So too, the costs of cognition matter: it may be irrational to carry out complex calculations, even when these calculations are within our abilities, if those calculations take time and cognitive resources away from other inquiries and activities. 3 Many theories of ideal rationality begin with a different starting point, which does not aim to reflect the rational importance of cognitive bounds (Carr, 2022;Smithies, 2015). 4 Theories of bounded rationality ask how agents should cognize, fixing some subset of their cognitive limitations, whereas on these views, ideal epistemology asks how agents should cognize once their cognitive limitations are removed.…”

“…Bounded rationality gets a bad rap in epistemology. 1 It is argued that theories of bounded rationality are overly context-sensitive; conventionalist; or dependent on ordinary language (Carr, 2022;Pasnau, 2013).…”

The comparison problem for approximating epistemic ideals

“…Bayesian epistemologists could turn to models of ideal advisors (see Smith, 1994, Sampson, 2022, and Karlan, 2021. We could say that epistemic ideals matter because they provide robust epistemic norms (Carr, 2021). We could say that epistemic ideals operate like the values of a function that we want to maximize, even though we might not be able to fully maximize all the values of the function (see Christensen, 2007, p. 24;Christensen, 2010).…”