Abstract:Within various contexts, such as politics and parenting, Confucianism has been criticized on the basis that it endorses 'unquestioning obedience' to authority. In recent years, several philosophers have argued against this view by appealing to textual evidence from Classical Confucian philosophers. This article examines Wang Yangming's views on this subject, arguing that Wang teaches that criticism of those who stand in a socially superior role relation is not only permitted, but encouraged. From this, the implications that Wang's analysis has for (...) contemporary discussions of disagreement between epistemic superiors and inferiors and epistemic peerhood are considered. It will be argued that Wang's position is much closer to the total evidence view than the preemptive view. Relatedly, it is suggested that Wang provides a novel proposal about how to recognize or disregard epistemic 'superiors', especially in the context of moral knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophers ponder on how to do philosophy and how to do it well. This pondering has divided metaphilosophers’ concern about philosophical methodology into two groups that I shall label “pro-history” and “pro-intuitions”. The claim (and belief) of philosophers in the former group can be realized with this sentence by Robert Pasnau (2011): “The discipline of philosophy benefits from a serious, sustained engagement with its history.” The latter group believes that for philosophy not to slide into the realm of irrelevance, rather (...) than studying history of philosophy, it must rely on intuitions to make sense of our present ontologies. In this paper, I examine the disagreement between both parties and argue that both proponents of pro-history and pro-intuitions are wrongheaded. I argue for what I call proto-history. Proto-history here refers to the method of doing philosophy in which the intuitions of philosophers are informed by the history of philosophy (though not directly influencing, but indirectly informing). I shall refer to this informing-ness as “autonomous impression.” By autonomous impression, I mean the process of forming beliefs based on intuitions and by taking into account one’s knowledge about other people’s (i.e., past philosophers’) beliefs and opinions. (shrink)

An epistemic agent A is a false epistemic authority for others iff they falsely believe A to be in a position to help them accomplish their epistemic ends. A major divide exists between what I call "epistemic quacks", who falsely believe themselves to be relevantly competent, and "epistemic charlatans", i.e., false authorities who believe or even know that they are incompetent. Both types of false authority do not cover what Lackey (2021) calls "predatory experts": experts who systematically misuse their social-epistemic (...) status as a cover for predatory behavior. Qua experts, predatory experts are competent and thus could (and maybe sometimes do) help their clients. But should we count them as genuine epistemic authorities? No, I argue, they are false epistemic authorities because, in addition to their practical and moral misconduct, such experts systematically deceive their clients, thereby thwarting the clients’ epistemic ends. (shrink)

Recently, many normative theories of democracy have taken an epistemic turn. Rather than focus on democracy's morally desirable features, they argue that democracy is valuable (at least in part) because it tends to produce correct political decisions. I argue that these theories place epistemic demands on citizens that conflict with core democratic commitments. First, I discuss a well-known challenge to epistemic arguments for democracy that I call the ‘deference problem’. I then argue that framing debates about this deference problem in (...) terms of work on epistemic defeat reveals a structurally similar but more serious challenge for epistemic arguments for democracy. Succinctly put, the problem is that if democracy tends to produce correct political decisions, then those in the minority might be required to suspend beliefs about political matters; however, this requirement conflicts with the pivotal democratic principle of self-government. Call this the ‘suspension problem’. (shrink)

Deference in politics is often necessary. To answer questions like, “Should the government increase the federal minimum wage?” and “Should the state introduce a vaccine mandate?”, we need to know relevant scientific and economic facts, make complex value judgments, and answer questions about incentives and implementation. Lay citizens typically lack the time, resources, and competence to answer these questions on their own. Hence, they must defer to others. But to whom should they defer? A common answer is that they should—or (...) are at least permitted to—defer to co-partisans. This view initially seems attractive on both normative and empirical grounds. Against this, I argue that deference to co-partisans has overlooked moral and epistemic problems. In light of them, I propose several new ways to revise our expectations of citizens in a democracy both individually and institutionally. (shrink)