Abstract
Formally inclined epistemologists often theorize about ideally
rational agents—agents who exemplify rational ideals, such as
probabilistic coherence, that human beings could never fully realize.
This approach can be defended against the well-known worry
that abstracting from human cognitive imperfections deprives the
approach of interest. But a different worry arises when we ask what
an ideal agent should believe about her own cognitive perfection
(even an agent who is in fact cognitively perfect might, it would
seem, be uncertain of this fact). Consideration of this question
reveals an interesting feature of the structure of our epistemic ideals:
for agents with limited information, our epistemic ideals turn
out to conflict with one another. This suggests that we must revise
the way we see ideal agents in epistemic theorizing.