Is Knowledge Normative?

Abstract

is knowledge normative?Epistemology is, at least in part, a normative discipline.Epistemologists are concerned not simply with what people believe, how confident they are, or the conditions under which they believe it or are so confident.They are also -and more interestingly -concerned with what people should believe, how confident they should be, and the conditions under which they should believe it and be so confident.But epistemology is, paradigmatically, the study of knowledge.Is knowledge itself a normative concept?Or is it merely normatively important?That is the question that will interest me in this paper.I will attempt to make it more precise as we go along. PreliminariesPhilosophers sometimes distinguish concepts that concern norms, such as those expressed paradigmatically by words such as 'must', 'ought', 'obligation', and 'reason' in appropriate contexts, with concepts that concern values, such as those expressed paradigmatically by words such as 'good' and 'better'.1 Others sometimes contrast the 'genuine' normativity of reasons with the pseudo-normativity of rules. 2 Neither of these is the distinction that I have in mind, when I say that epistemology is at least in part a normative discipline.When I say this, I mean to contrast 'normative' with 'descriptive' and with 'positive', rather than with 'evaluative' or to contrast reasons with rules.This point is important.When epistemologists question what agents ought to believe, or how confident they ought to be, they are typically interested in what agents ought rationally to believe, or how confident they rationally ought to be.Or sometimes the question is even more direct: what beliefs or levels of confidence do rational agents have -and hence what beliefs or levels of confidence must other agents have in order to be rational?When we ask, in epistemology, what an agent must or ought to believe in her situation, we are using some of the words, 'must' and 'ought', that fall paradigmatically on the 'normative' side of the 1 Compare Tappolet [2013]. 2 See especially Parfit [2011, 144-145].

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