To the Best of Our Knowledge

Abstract

We expect certain things of each other as epistemic subjects, and it is the normativity of these expectations that underwrites the normativity of epistemic assessment itself. In developing this claim Sanford C. Goldberg aims to honor the insights of both internalist and externalist approaches to epistemic justification. With the internalist he embraces the idea that knowledgeable belief requires belief that is formed and maintained in an epistemically responsible fashion; with the externalist he embraces the idea that knowledgeable belief requires belief that is formed and sustained through a reliable process. In this book Goldberg proposes to marry these two dimensions into a single account of the standards of epistemic assessment. This marriage reflects our profound and ineliminable dependence on one another for what we know of the world—a dependence which is rationalized by the expectations we are entitled to have of one another as epistemic subjects. The expectations in question are those through which we hold each other accountable to standards of both (epistemic) reliability and (epistemic) responsibility. The resulting theory has far-reaching implications not only for the theory of epistemic normativity, but also for our understanding of epistemic defeat, the theory of epistemic responsibility, and for a full appreciation of the various social dimensions of knowledge.

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