Abstract
It’s a well-recognized truth that what’s morally or politically required can come apart from what’s best for you individually. But this thought—the thought that what’s epistemically required may be divorced from what’s epistemically best for you—is mostly absent in epistemology. On the traditional picture, epistemic obligations are assumed to be self-regarding. In this paper, I argue against this dogma. I argue that we have other-regarding epistemic obligations and epistemic obligations to the groups we are members of. Further, I show how these obligations can play a role in justifying the levying of epistemic taxes.
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Notes
For an extensive discussion of this view in epistemology see Berker (2013b). Examples include Goldman (1979); Feldman (1988, 2000); Joyce (1998, 2009); Greaves and Wallace (2006); Dogramaci and Horowitz (2016); Leitgeb and Pettigrew (2010); Berker 2013a, Pettigrew (2016); Sharadin (2018); Singer (2018), 2019; Schoenfield (2019), Horowitz et al. (2024).
There is disagreement amongst consequentialists over what has epistemic value. See Littlejohn (2015) for example.
I mean action in a very loose sense here, such that belief formation and credence update count as actions. While action often implies some degree of agential control, I do not mean to commit myself to doxastic voluntarism by this choice of words. See Alston (1988) and Feldman (2000) for discussion. Further, as will become clear, I think the epistemic normativity applies to a much broader range of actions than doxastic actions.
With the one exception being ethical egoism.
Consider McGrath (2025), “it is a matter of controversy whether we have any positive epistemic duties, i.e., whether we epistemically should have certain beliefs.” [italics added].
This can also be seen in much work at the foundations of epistemic normativity. For example, Nolfi frames much of her interesting recent paper about the foundation of epistemic norms around the following question: What is the content of epistemic norms? “This question might be framed as a question about what conformity with epistemic norms involves, requires, or demands. Or, alternatively, it might be framed as a question about what it takes for a subject’s doxastic states to conform with epistemic norms” (Nolfi, 2023 pp. 9–10. Emphasis added).
I do not mean to imply that these views are necessarily self-regarding. In fact, I will argue that epistemic consequentialist views (amongst others) ought to be expanded to account for our other-regarding epistemic obligations.
At least, this is one way of understanding one important contribution of this work.
One potential disanalogy between the welfare analogy and self-regarding epistemic norms, is that prudential norms are not typically understood as binding in the way self-regarding epistemic normativity often is thought to be (although see Carter, 2024). But, keeping this important difference in mind, I think it is a fruitful analogy.
There are many views that imply that promoting moral value is not what matters for moral right action. I gloss over these for expedience here, but I will return to discuss this further in later sections.
This is not to rule out the possibility that there are moral obligations to the self. For arguments to that effect, see Schofield (2021).
See also O-Rourke-Friel (2025) for a view according to which normative concepts traditionally designed for the evaluation of individuals (like justification) are themselves irreducibly social.
It is worth noting that Gunn relies heavily on Clifford (1877), and Clifford seems to understand epistemic norms as a species of moral norm (For one reason to be concerned with Clifford’s view, see Kauppinen, 2018). While Gunn seems to endorse the view that the duties in question are epistemic, she is primarily focused on defending the claim that there are such duties and is happy for readers to understand them as either epistemic or moral.
On Gunn’s view our obligations to listen are partially self-regarding—to avoid getting duped. However, they also have an important other-regarding component as well—how we listen will ultimately affect what we communicate to others.
On community epistemic norms see also Miller & Pinto 2022.
In their fascinating recent paper, Astola et al. (2024) understand some of these conflict cases as cases where something that is an epistemic vice for an individual is an epistemic virtue for the group. Further they assume that “benefits to the collective are worth the sacrifice of the individual’s interest”. My goal in this paper is to defend (a weaker version of) this assumption—at least in some cases we epistemically ought to sacrifice our own epistemic interests for the sake of the group and/or other individuals.
Norms of assertion represent a contested, and interesting, case. Some believe that some norms of assertion are genuinely epistemic norms (Williamson, 2000; García-Carpintero, 2004; Lackey, 2007; Kauppinen, 2018); while those who reject the view that there can be epistemic reasons for action deny this (Cohen, 2016; Arpaly, 2023). There is also a question as to whether (if they are epistemic) the norm of assertion is genuinely other-regarding—in other words, whether the reason one ought to abide by the norm is for the epistemic sake of others. On many views, it seems to merely be the epistemic status (e.g. knowledge) of the content of assertion that makes the relevant proposition’s assertion warranted.
Even this view does not seem particularly promising. Most people accept that we don’t have direct control over our doxastic states. If that is so, then the difference between our ability to affect our own doxastic states and other’s is likely nothing more than a matter of degree. And then it is hard to see why we should think that our relationship with our own doxastic states is particularly special.
Johnson (2023) addresses a related but distinct version of this worry. According to this worry, in every case where there is an epistemic obligation there is also a moral obligation, making epistemic obligations theoretically superfluous. I take her defense to be compelling and thus leave that worry to the side.
Given the recent explosion of work on inquiry—where the view that there are epistemic reasons to inquire is quite popular—this is but a small sample of those who accept this view.
Importantly, direction of fit matters here, as argued compellingly by Carr (2025). We do not desire to change the world such that our minds match it, but to bring our minds to match the world.
On one way of developing this view, epistemic norms can give us reasons to do anything that is conducive to getting our minds to match the world, including eating sandwiches (Singer and Arnowitz 2021). Although, see Fleisher 2023 and Palmira 2024 for views that reject this expansive picture.
Relatedly, some philosophers have argued that epistemic norms all reduce to some other type of normativity. For example, some philosophers think all epistemic norms are reducible to instrumental or pragmatic norms (Foley, 1987; Laudan, 1990; Kornblith, 1993; Nozick, 1993). There are well known reasons to be worried about these reductions (see Kelly, 2003; Worsnip, 2024). But I will not attempt to settle this complex debate here.
Consider also misinformation inoculation (Roozenbeek et. al., 2022).
For a helpful informal description of some of these cases, see Astola et al. (2024).
See Johnson (2023) for a compelling defense of the claim that what I do can make a difference your epistemic welfare.
The argument in this subsection is closely related to arguments made by Schwenkenbecher (2022), Joshi (2021), and Joshi and McKenna (2025) that we have moral obligations to work together to bring about certain collective epistemic goods. But here I defend the claim that we have other-regarding epistemic obligations to contribute to the epistemic good of the groups we are members of.
Here I try to live up to O’Rourke-Friel’s (2025) comedic claim that all social epistemology papers must say “Since Descartes, traditional epistemology has been individualistic with respect to [insert epistemic phenomenon here]. I will argue that [epistemic phenomenon] is in fact deeply social”.
Even trusting science and trusting technology is plausibly not something I can do on my own but instead do with and because of the epistemic communities I am a member of (Contessa, 2023).
I am grateful to Juan Carlos Gonzáles for encouraging me to use the organism metaphor.
As Elgin (2014) shows healthy socio-epistemic environments are essential for epistemic success.
This is intended to parallel Wellman’s (2001) suggestion that the badness of the state of nature (and the impossibility of escaping it without a state) plays a role in grounding political obligations like the obligation to pay taxes. I will turn to the idea of epistemic taxes in section 4. One thing worth noting about this parallel, however, is that the epistemic state of nature has never obtained (O’Rourke-Friel, 2025). Nonetheless, I believe it is still useful to imagine what such a state would be like, because doing so brings to light how deeply social epistemic life is.
This is related to Longino’s (2022) point that science is our most successful epistemic practice, so we should study scientific practice to understand epistemic normativity. However, she thinks this has radical implications for our accounts of epistemic welfare. On her view, epistemic norms govern communities and social interactions, rather than epistemic states of groups or individuals. Further, epistemic norms governing individuals (like knowledge norms) are “derivative, dependent on membership and participation in communities satisfying [the community] norms”. While our epistemic welfare surely depends to some degree on the groups that we are members of, it would be a mistake to conclude from this that epistemic welfare is wholly dependent and derivative on facts about the groups we are members of. Compare with non-epistemic welfare. How happy I am surely depends on the communities I am a member of in many ways. But it would be a mistake to claim that how happy I am is wholly dependent and derivative of the communities I am a part of are. There is still something to individual welfare.
Notice, this argument holds regardless of whether we are epistemic consequentialists of not. If a view of epistemic normativity implies that we should hyper fixate on one tiny portion of epistemic value and only respect that value, we should reject that view.
Johnson (2023) develops one kind of view like this.
See Johnson (2018) for an argument that we sometimes have epistemic obligations to disagree with others.
One view of truth that sits well with this picture is Sher’s (forthcoming )view that truth is a human value.
One reason we might create an institutional role is to address epistemic vulnerabilities. One might wonder, then, if we might understand some of the obligations Johnson (2023) defends as role-based obligations. Of course, it is often thought that there can be many reasons other than addressing vulnerabilities for creating roles and for role-based obligations to be normatively binding. So, even if this is right, I would want to point out that the scope of role-based epistemic obligations is likely broader.
In the introduction, I mentioned that some authors have argued that we have political reason to take other people’s epistemic interests into account. For example, Morgan-Olson (2013) argues that we have a civic obligation to listen where this is grounded in the value of listening to the group. There are two distinct ways we could make sense of obligations like this. First, we could make sense of them as strictly political obligations. Second, we could understand them as distinctively epistemic obligations that one incurs because of the role they occupy in a democratic community. I won’t weigh in on the merits of these two approaches here.
Lackey uses this case for a very different purpose—to argue against a knowledge norm on assertion.
While I don’t have the space to fully defend this last claim here, compare with Wallace’s (2019) view of relational morality.
This is closely related to Miller and Record’s (2022) practicability arguments—where new technologies make new actions practicable and can result in new moral and epistemic responsibilities.
A distinct ground for these obligations may be purely consequentialist.
Importantly, I do not mean to imply that my view requires the truth of this view.
This picture can also help us understand the relationship between the moral and political arguments for caring about the epistemic community and my view.
Scholars in other fields have been thinking seriously about epistemic taxes. For examples, consider Ethan Zuckerman’s work at the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure and for a fascinating history and interesting arguments about expanding public epistemic infrastructure see (Jolly & Goodman, 2021). My hope is that this work can make a contribution to understanding the normative underpinnings of these scholar’s ideas.
It is worth noting that we do not label other taxes like this. For example, when we pay taxes to support welfare, we do not call these “moral taxes”. One reason I make this terminological choice is to make it easy to distinguish the justificatory grounds for these taxes—especially since I am suggesting that there are novel justificatory grounds. I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for encouraging me to discuss this.
I’m grateful to Dan Hicks and an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to discuss alternate distinctively epistemic normative grounds for epistemic taxation.
There may be other legitimate justifications for taxation and other permissible uses outside of promotion of the public good, but these (central) justifications and uses will be my focus.
See Wellman (2001) for one argument from beneficence, as well as a discussion of some issues with the simple account I’ve offered here. One thing worth noting is that he grounds his view in the existence of Samaritan moral obligations. Interestingly, some of the cases defended by Johnson (2018) seem analogous to this kind of moral obligation and might be able to bolster this defense. I gloss over these issues for expedience.
As the effectiveness of donating to NASA diminishes, donating there may no longer be a permissible way of offloading our obligations.
I am grateful to Yuan Yuan for asking questions about this.
There are many objections which remain unaddressed. For example, in conversation David Danks has proposed Epistemic Libertarianism—a view that endorses the existence of other-regarding epistemic obligations but denies that these can be the grounds for public taxation.
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Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to Jennifer Rose Carr for her many insightful comments and contributions to the ideas contained in this paper. I also owe thanks to five anonymous reviewers as well as audiences at the UCSD Workshop on Agency and Values (WAVE); The UC Merced Workshop in Science, Values, and Policy; Talks on Morality Across the Ocean (TOMATO^2); Iowa State University; and the Southwest Graduate Conference in Philosophy. I owe special thanks to Alice Moneypenny, Ying Liu, David Brink, Saba Bazargan-Forward, David Faraci, David Danks, Peter Jaworski, Juan Carlos-Gonzáles (who first suggested the organism analogy to me), Annemarie Butler, Stephen Biggs, Rachel Achs, Ranpal Dosanjh, Andrew Stewart, Travis Butler for particularly illuminating questions, comments, and challenges.
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Amico-Korby, D. The epistemic organism: a defense of other-regarding epistemic obligations. Synthese 206, 286 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-025-05358-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-025-05358-z